In addition to producing exotic beams for nuclear science, fast heavy-ion interactions at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) will also lead to by-product accumulation of rare isotopes in controlled water and gas streams. The aim of my group’s research is to develop the necessary techniques to chemically collect and purify those by-product isotopes so that they can be utilized in basic and applied science experiments.

While FRIB construction is underway, we are using a new isotope harvesting beam blocker in low power tests at the NSCL to try to understand the physical and chemical conditions of the water and gas streams. Initial experiments with ⁴⁰Ca and ⁴⁸Ca beams showed that interesting isotopes like ⁴⁸V, ⁴⁸Cr, and ⁴⁷Ca are essentially 100% extractable from irradiated water. Harvested ⁴⁷Ca was also used as a parent isotope for generating radioisotopically pure ⁴⁷Sc, which has medical relevance in targeted radiotherapy research. Effects like hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide formation from heavy-ion beam radiolysis followed expected trends. The results are promising so far, but scaling up in beam power is critical-- as of now we are still testing at 5 orders of magnitude below the anticipated full power of FRIB.

Argonne Physics Division Colloquium Schedule