Preparation of Wheels of Praseodymium via Evaporation

The Center for Accelerator Target Science (CATS) received a request for a Praseodymium target wheel to be used at the Argonne Gas Filled Analyzer (AGFA) at the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System (ATLAS). Those targets will receive up to 200 pnA of 58 Ni at 4.7 MeV/A . In order to accomodate such high beam current, a target wheel of 33 cm diameter with 16 target positions will be used. Using the resistive heating evaporation technique, we tested multiple varieties of targets to best suit the experiment; this includes using different forms of Praseodymium such as a metal compared to a compound, and different backings such as carbon, aluminum, and nickel.