Speaker
Description
Lithium targets are used in many nuclear experiments, such as alpha transfer experiments with enriched lithium-6 targets. Lithium, however, is difficult to work with. In its pure metallic elemental form, lithium is extraordinarily chemically sensitive, reacting with oxygen, water vapor, and even nitrogen. Lithium salts can be used as more stable targets for experiments, but can create additional backgrounds and reduced yields. Our innovation is a complete encapsulation of the lithium in a thin layer of gold to prevent it from coming in contact with the atmosphere through careful physical vapor deposition. The use of a hijacked shutter to serve as a mask for our multilayer deposition allowed for the lithium target core to have no direct contact with air. Our targets were subsequently used in a successful alpha transfer experiment.