During the last two years, the performance of the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE/CERN (Geneva) has been considerably enhanced. Many technical improvements have been completed (i) to access nuclides that are produced in minute quantities of only 100 ions s−1, (ii) to increase the relative mass accuracy to ≤ 1 × 10−8 and (iii) to make accessible nuclei with a half-life of down to ≈ 5 ms. The major steps are presented, in particular the recent implementation of a magnetron phase locking mechanism which results in a significant reduction of the duration of ISOLTRAP’s cyclotron measurements.

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