The ISOLDE facility has undergone numerous changes over the last 17 years driven by both the physics and technical community with a common goal to improve on beam variety, beam quality and safety. Improvements have been made in civil engineering and operational equipment while continuing developments aim to ensure operations following a potential increase in primary beam intensity and energy. This paper outlines the principal technical changes incurred at ISOLDE by building on a similar publication of the facility upgrades by Kugler (2000 Hyperfine Interact. 129 23–42). It also provides an insight into future perspectives through a brief summary issues addressed in the HIE-ISOLDE design study Catherall et al (2013 Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. B 317 204–207).

We report on the measurement of the ^{7}Be(n,p)^{7}Li cross section from thermal to approximately 325 keV neutron energy, performed in the high-flux experimental area (EAR2) of the n_TOF facility at CERN. This reaction plays a key role in the lithium yield of the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) for standard cosmology. The only two previous time-of-flight measurements performed on this reaction did not cover the energy window of interest for BBN, and they showed a large discrepancy between each other. The measurement was performed with a Si telescope and a high-purity sample produced by implantation of a ^{7}Be ion beam at the ISOLDE facility at CERN. While a significantly higher cross section is found at low energy, relative to current evaluations, in the region of BBN interest, the present results are consistent with the values inferred from the time-reversal ^{7}Li(p,n)^{7}Be reaction, thus yielding only a relatively minor improvement on the so-called cosmological lithium problem. The relevance of these results on the near-threshold neutron production in the p+^{7}Li reaction is also discussed.

A controlled and precise determination of the cross sections of the fusion reactions 7 Be(p, γ ) 8 B and 3 He( 4 He, γ ) 7 Be, which play an important role in determining the solar neutrino flux, necessitates the knowledge of a precise value of the electron-capture half-life of 7 Be. This half-life may depend on the material hosting the 7 Be atoms via small modifications of the electron density around the 7 Be nucleus. In this brief communication we report on the measurement of 7 Be implanted in four materials: copper, aluminum, sapphire, and PVC. The four results are consistent with a null host dependence within two standard deviations and their weighted average of 53.236(39) d agrees very well with the adopted value in the literature, 53.22 (6) d. The present results may exhibit a slight (0.22%) increase of the half-life at room temperature for metals compared to insulators that requires further studies.

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Refractory elements, i.e. elements with very high melting point and low vapor pressure, cannot be released in atomic form from an ISOL target. Therefore most of these elements are presently not available as ISOL beams. However, when reactive gases are introduced into the target, they may form volatile compounds with the refractory elements, allowing for an easier transport to the ion source. Particularly useful are high-temperature stable fluorides and oxides. By these chemical evaporation methods so far ISOL beams of the refractory elements C, Zr, Hf and Ta have been produced. We discuss how ISOL beams of B, Ti, Nb, Mo, Tc, Ru, W, Re, Os and Ir could be produced in a similar way. PACS. 28.60.+s Isotope separation -29.25.Ni Ion sources -29.25.Rm Sources of radioactive nuclei -82.40.-g Chemical kinetics and reactions: special regimes and techniques This work was supported by the EU-RTD project TAR-GISOL (contract HPRI-CT-2001-50033).1 This is valid when the type of atom-surface bonds is similar to that in solid state and the same monomolecular species dominate desorption and sublimation.