Implantation of Stable Nuclei Implantation of Stable Nuclei

Nuclear techniques of analysis such as Perturbed Angular Correlation (PAC) spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Oriented Nuclei (NMRON) are well established for the study of structural and magnetic properties of crystalline materials. In both techniques a radioactive isotope is introduced into the material as a probe. Radioactive decays of the probing nuclei may be detected to extract information about local electric and magnetic fields and study, for example, structural properties of the host material or annealing processes. While diffusion is a common method to introduce radioactivity to host materials, with ion implantation the number of introduced nuclei can be controlled explicitly and is not affected by physical properties of the host material as is the case for diffusion. The use of negative-ion implantation has the added advantage that negative ions can be produced abundantly for most elements. Recoil implantation of energetic radioactive ions is routinely used in Canberra, however, structural damage to crystals is often severe. The direct implantation of radioactivity at low energies would minimize such damage and improve the efficacy of NMRON and PAC studies. A low energy ion implanter to facilitate such work is currently under development in the radiation laboratories (of the University of New South Wales) at the Australian Defence Force Academy.