Measurement on Isotope Ratio in Process of Photo-chemical Lithium Isotope Separation

A method for measuring the isotope ratio in a photo-chemical lithium isotope separation process based on separation conditions was proposed. Instead of doing integration around the absorption peaks, which was often conducted in calculating the isotope ratio from experimental curves, the peak’s values were used to compute the isotope ratio of the lithium. The advantage of this procedure is that the complicated scaling operation for experimental curves can be avoided. The use of D₂ line of ⁶Li with stronger absorption effect can help to improve the measurement precision when the content of ⁶Li in atomic vapor is low. An experimental setup was built and tested. In one experimental condition the relative standard deviation of the measured isotope ratio is less than 1%, which shows that the method is sensitive to the change of the isotope ratio in a photo-chemical lithium isotope separation process. It means that the method is applicable as a diagnostic tool in the study of lithium atomic vapor laser isotope separation.