Eur. Phys. J. D (2012) 66: 232
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2012-30221-3

Regular Article

Low-field mobilities of rare-earth metals^*

¹ Fakultät für Physik der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany
² Institut für Kernphysik der Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

^a Present address: Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionen forschung, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany. e-mail: m.laatiaoui@gsi.de

Received: 3 April 2012
Received in final form: 29 June 2012
Published online: 6 September 2012

Abstract

In this paper, a dedicated ion mobility spectrometer for heavy element research will be presented. Like most advanced mobility spectrometers, the presented apparatus is equipped with a mass spectrometer for isotope-selective detection. In addition, the sample atoms are ionized by exploiting the element-selective laser resonance ionization techniques. First systematic studies at various lanthanide elements have shown that their low-field mobilities in argon are quite similar. The only exception is the element gadolinium, which exhibited an 8% lower reduced mobility of 1.692(24) cm²/V s. This anomaly is assumed to be a direct consequence of occupying the d- instead of an f-orbital in singly charged gadolinium, which in turn has a significant impact on the gadolinium-argon interaction potential.