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In this work alternative methods for the production of terbium isotopes, and in particular 152Tb and 155Tb, have been investigated. These isotopes, which could be used for theragnostics, have been produced using an alpha and a proton beam incident on europium and gadolinium targets, respectively. The experimental results have been compared with the predicted cross-sections, calculated using TALYS and PACE4 code.

A new plunger device has been designed and is being built at the University of Manchester to measure lifetimes of unbound states in exotic nuclei approaching the proton drip-line. The device is designed to work in both vacuum and gas environments and will be used in conjunction with the gas filled separator RITU and the vacuum-mode separator MARA at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. This will enable the accurate measurement of excited state lifetimes identified via isomer and charged-particle tagging. The plunger will be used to address many key facets of nuclear structure physics with particular emphasis on the effect of deformation on proton emission rates.

A Differential Plunger device for measuring the lifetimes of Unbound Nuclear States (DPUNS) is currently being built at the University of Manchester. The plunger has been designed to be able to work with the proton-, alpha-, beta- and isomer-tagging methods using the JUROGAM II - RITU - GREAT setup at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. Valuable nuclear-structure information can be investigated from the measurement of lifetimes in proton-and alpha-unbound nuclei. To date, nuclear structure information from proton emission has been obtained from a comparison of the experimentally measured half-life with that predicted from various tunnelling calculations. A crucial parameter required to perform these calculations is the deformation of the parent nucleus involved in the decay, which in all cases to date, has only ever been estimated or calculated from theory. DPUNS aims to address this logical weakness through the measurement of the lifetimes of excited states in these unbound nuclei. The first measurement of a lifetime in a proton-unbound nucleus was recently obtained for 109I. The results from this measurement were discussed along with the future physics programme that can be performed with DPUNS.

The isomeric structure of the neutron deficient nucleus 132Pr, located in the rare-earth region of the nuclear chart, has been studied with the 98Mo(40Ar,5pn)132Pr reaction at beam energies of 150, 158 and 165 MeV. The experiment was performed at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland where the 40Ar beam was accelerated onto the target by the K130 cyclotron. The JUROGAM II HPGe detector array was employed in conjunction with the RITU gas-filled recoil separator. The focal-plane chamber housed a multi wire proportional counter and a position-sensitive silicon strip detector used for the implantation and identification of recoiling nuclei. The recoil-isomer tagging technique was used to correlate the delayed decays, measured in the Planar and Clover detectors of the GREAT spectrometer, with the known prompt transitions in 132Pr. Two new delayed transitions have been observed at energies of 102 and 118 keV. The corresponding X ray peaks are consistent with Pr Kα and Kβ X rays with energies of 35.63 and 40.91 keV, respectively. The half-life of the newly established isomeric state, from which the 102 and 118-keV transitions proceed, has been measured to be 2.5(3) μs.