A uniform size liquid microdroplet generator was fabricated with glass orifice. The orifice of the generator was made as small as 5 μm on a Pyrex tube. The size of the uniform ethanol droplets generated by the 5 μm orifice varied from 19 to 14 μm as the driving frequency changed from 150 to 400 kHz. Operation characteristics of this generator were comparable to those of the commercial devices. We also measured the interdroplet separation with the diffraction pattern of the array of droplets in order to get the velocity of droplet stream at various stream positions and driving frequencies. The deceleration of droplet stream was nearly independent of the driving frequency which determines the droplet size and interdroplet separation.

An isomer has been detected in 171 Hf with a half-life of T 1/2 = 29.5(9) s. The state was populated in the 170 Yb(α,3n) 171m Hf reaction at a beam energy of E α = 50 MeV in an on-line ion guide isotope separator. The isomeric 171m Hf + beam was extracted from the ion guide, mass-analysed and implanted in the surface of a microchannel-plate. The half-life of the collected activity was measured from the decay of the microchannel-plate count rate. We associate the isomer with the first excited state in 171 Hf with spin 1/2 − at an excitation energy of 22(2) keV.