Radioactive isotopes are used extensively in solid-state physics. The different techniques can be roughly subdivided into two classes: the classical nuclear techniques like Mossbauer spectroscopy, perturbed angular correlation spectroscopy, beta-NMR and emission channelling. They all need radioactive isotopes with specific nuclear parameters and decay properties. The second group comprises radio tracer techniques that combine radioactive isotopes with conventional spectroscopic techniques used in semiconductor physics such as deep level transient spectroscopy, capacitance voltage measurements, or photoluminescence spectroscopy. Here, the radioactive decay is used to label the impurity under investigation. This paper gives some examples of current experiments at ISOLDE.
