Recent developments at ISOLTRAP: towards a relative mass accuracy of exotic nuclei below $10^{-8}$

During the last two years, the performance of the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE/CERN (Geneva) has been considerably enhanced. Many technical improvements have been completed (i) to access nuclides that are produced in minute quantities of only 100 ions s/sup -1/, (ii) to increase the relative mass accuracy to <or=1 * 10/sup -8/ and (iii) to make accessible nuclei with a half-life of down to approximately=50 ms. The major steps are presented, in particular the recent implementation of a magnetron phase locking mechanism which results in a significant reduction of the duration of ISOLTRAP's cyclotron measurements. (20 refs).