Atomic vapor laser isotope separation has been studied at the Institute for Advanced Studies for nuclear purposes since 1982, and recently it has been questioned about its potentialities for the aerospace area. Many applications from nuclear propulsion to electricity generation and space navigation have been found, which justify the study of isotope separation for aerospace applications. ne of the ey process, and the rst step for atomic vapor laser isotope separation, is the production of a neutral vapor jet. This paper discussed the potentiality of using laser ablation as a tool to generate neutral metal vapor jet for isotope separation purposes. The basis for the discussion is a set of experimental results obtained at the Institute for Advanced Studies. The experiments were described, the results were analyzed using basic theoretical treatment found in the literature, and it was concluded that laser ablation is a potential tool for the generation of a neutral vapor jet for atomic vapor laser isotope separation purposes.

This work aimed the obtainment of a neutral atomic jet departing from a plume generated by laser ablation of copper targets. A pair of electrodes together with a transducer pressure sensor was used to study the ablated plume charge composition and also to measure the ion extraction from the plasma plume. The neutral beam was produced with this setup and the relative abundance of neutrals in the plasma was measured, it decreases from 30% to 8% when the laser fluence is varied from 20 J/cm(2) to 32 J/cm(2). The necessary voltage to completely remove the ions from the plume varied from 10 V to 230 V in the same fluence range. TOF analysis resulted in center of mass velocities between 3.4 and 4.6 km/s, longitudinal temperature in the range from 1 × 10(4) K to 2.4 × 10(4) K and a Mach number of M = 2.36, calculated using purely hydrodynamic expansion approximation.

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It was performed a Time of Flight (TOF) study for the plume produced by laser ablation of cooper by 355 nm, 23 ns duration laser pulses, in vacuum. The plume sensor was made of a piezoelectric PVDF film associated with a pair of electrodes. By varying the electrodes polarization we evaluated the fraction of neutral atoms, which ranged from 8 to 30 % of the plume. By adjusting a TOF function to the PVDF electric signal we obtained the center of mass velocity and the translational temperature. It was observed that product vCM x Tz remains constant with the electrodes potential and that the accelerating potential to which the plume is submitted has practical limits.