Throughout the last century, theoretical and experimental research made by the international nuclear physicists community has led to important advancement in the knowledge of the mechanisms that govern the behavior and stability of the nuclei. The technological improvements necessary to support this research has often opened the way to new applications in other field of science and industry which directly reflects in our common life experience.
Nowadays, Europe is becoming more and more a leader in both theoretical and experimental nuclear physics, as testified by the presence on its territory of several institutes and laboratories dedicated to this field of research, like CERN (Organisation Europeenne pour la Recherche Nucleaire), the world’s largest particle physics laboratory. Italy, represented mainly by INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare), is one of the main members of this community.
One of the most important projects supported by INFN is SPES (Selective Production of Exotic Species), which aim is to develop a facility for the production of radioactive ion beams (RIBs) in one of the four national laboratories of INFN, LNL (Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro).
The facility is designed to produce and deliver to users both proton-rich and neutron-rich nuclei (range of mass 80-160 amu) to be used for nuclear physics research, as well as other applications in different fields of science. The generation of the aforementioned isotopes will occur inside a properly designed target, which represents the core of the whole project. The choice of the proper material for the target, both in terms of composition and properties, is of vital importance in determining the quantity and type of the produced isotopes.
In this work, the synthesis and characterization of different types of target materials are presented. The results of experimental tests performed on some of the produced materials, in configurations very similar to those intended for the final SPES facility are also reported.
Chapter 1 gives a general overview of the SPES project and its context whereas chapter 2 introduces the main topics related to the on-line behavior of the SPES target, relative to both its layout and to the properties of the material constituting it. Chapter 3 is focused on uranium carbide, which will be used at SPES to produce neutron-rich isotopes; after a description of its main physicochemical properties, the results of two on-line tests performed on target prototypes made of this material is reported and discussed into detail. In chapter 4 the synthesis methods and release-related properties of two potential materials to be used as SPES targets for the production of proton-rich isotopes, boron and lanthanum carbides, are presented