Solid state physics at ISOLDE

Radioactive atoms have been used in solid state physics and in materials science for decades. Besides their classical applications as tracers for diffusion studies, nuclear techniques such as Mossbauer spectroscopy, perturbed gamma gamma angular correlation, beta -NMR, and emission channeling make use of nuclear properties (via hyperfine interactions or emitted alpha or beta particles) to gain microscopic information on structural and dynamical properties of solids. During the last decade, the availability of many different radioactive isotopes as clean ion beams at ISOL facilities like ISOLDE/CERN has triggered a new era involving methods sensitive to the optical and electronic properties of solids, especially in the field of semiconductor physics. This overview will browse through ongoing solid state physics experiments with radioactive ion beams at ISOLDE. A wide variety of problems is under study, involving bulk properties, surfaces and interfaces in many different systems like semiconductors, superconductors, magnetic systems, metals and ceramics. (33 refs).