Customized Isotopes Hold Promise for Advances in Science

A promising future in nuclear physics is in the design of isotopes--the ability scientists have to construct specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and create avenues to new technologies, according to investigators.

"We have developed a remarkable capability over the last 10 or so years that allows us to build a specific isotope to use in research,” said Dr. Bradley Sherrill, a professor of physics and associate director for research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University (MSU; East Lansing, USA). "It is a new tool that promises to allow whole new directions in research to move forward. There are tremendous advances that are possible.”

Dr. Sherrill described some of the possibilities, and what it will take to get there, in an article in the May 9, 2008, issue of Science magazine. In that article, he reported that nanotechnology is getting a lot of attention for the amazing possibilities of building objects with individual atoms and molecules. Developments in basic nuclear science already have given way to technologies such as PET scans--medical procedures that use special isotopes to target specific types of tumors.

Isotopes are the different versions of an element. Their nuclei have different numbers of neutrons, and thus give them different characteristics. Rare isotopes do not always exist in nature--they must be enticed out with high-energy collisions created by special machines, like those in MSU's Coupled Cyclotron facility. As technology advances, newer equipment is needed.

The next step for the U.S. nuclear science community will be the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, a world-leading facility for the study of nuclear structure and nuclear astrophysics, expected to be built by the U.S. Department of Energy sometime in the next decade.

According to Dr. Sherrill, this type of basic science--science to evaluate the core nature of the elements of life--has a lot of potential. He offers up positron emission tomography (PET) scans--as an example of the payoff associated with pushing the bounds of accelerator science to assess new specific isotopes. To create PET scans, scientists first had to create an isotope with a specific radioactivity that decayed quickly enough and safely enough to inject in the body.

"The rare-isotope research supported by National Science Foundation at the NSCL enables us to push forward our understanding of nuclei at the frontiers of stability, with direct connections to the processes that produce the elements in our world and that underlie the life cycle of stars,” said Bradley Keister, a program officer in NSF Physics Division. "Applications to societal areas including medicine and security have traditionally gone hand in hand with these ever-advancing capabilities.”

In the Science article, Dr. Sherrill stated that aggressively pursuing rare isotope research is necessary. "These are isotopes that are not easy to produce. That's the frontier we're working on, Dr. Sherrill wrote in his article. "A wider range of available isotopes should benefit the fields of biomedicine [by producing an expanded portfolio of radioisotopes], international security [by providing the technical underpinning to nuclear forensics specialists], and nuclear energy [by leading to better understanding of the sort of nuclear reactions that will power cleaner, next-generation reactors].”


Related Links:
National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University