Preparation of self-supporting nickel targets from Ni, Ni and Ni

The investigation of the distribution of the fusion-barrier height by heavy-ion collisions requires thin self-supporting targets. To increase the accuracy of the measurement the thickness and homogeneity has to be known as precisely as possible.We prepared the self-supporting nickel foils out of the isotopes ⁵⁸Ni, ⁶⁰Ni and ⁶¹Ni. The resulting targets were between 75 and 105 μg/cm^² thick. The foils were produced on copper backing by electron-beam gun evaporation and by extracted ion-beam sputtering, both in high vacuum. To obtain self-supporting nickel foils the copper was removed by etching. We will discuss and compare both methods.     

Fabrication and characterization of silver deposited micro fabricated quartz arrays for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)

In this work microfabricated silver coated two-dimensional quartz gratings are developed for the use as plasmonic arrays for surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The SERS technique provides enormous signal intensity and fingerprint specificity and is a powerful tool in chemical and biological applications. However, the acceptance and the employment of the SERS technique for (bio)analytical devices depends on the availability of suitable substrates with homogenous field enhancement properties. Here, the fabrication and optimization process of the SERS array with an enhancement factor between 10⁵ and 10⁶ is introduced.