The CERN-MEDICIS facility aims to produce emerging medical radionuclides for the theranostics approach in nuclear medicine with mass separation of ion beams. To enhance the radioisotope yield and purity of collected samples, the resonance ionization laser ion source MELISSA was constructed, and provided the first laser ions at the facility in 2019. Several operational tests were accomplished to investigate its performance in preparation for the upcoming production of terbium radioisotopes, which are of particular interest for medical applications.

Molecular beams injected into the ISOLDE Radio-Frequency adrupole cooler and buncher (RFQcb), ISCOOL, have been studied under varying conditions using a new Time-of-Flight (ToF) detector. When a beam of molecules is injected into the RFQcb and interacts with the bu er gas, collisional dissociation processes may occur. In this study, two di erent beams of molecules, CO + and N + 2 , were separately injected into ISCOOL, and two di erent bu er gases (pure helium or a 90:10 mixture of helium and neon) were used. e radio-frequency of the RFQcb was varied as the molecules, along with the fragments from the dissociation processes, were extracted from ISCOOL and studied using the new Time-of-Flight detector. e main nding of this work is that the rates for molecular dissociation within ISCOOL were very small for both CO + and N + 2 , with the largest rates found for CO + .