The Isope Separation On-Line (ISOL) technique evolved from chemical techniques used to separate radioactive isotopes off-line from irradiated "targets". The ISOL targets of today, used at e.g. ISOLDE, can be of many different types and in different phases but the isotopes are always delivered at very low energies making the technique ideal for study of ground state properties and collections for other applications such as solid state physics and medical physics. The possibility of accelerating these low energy beams for nuclear structure studies, and in the long term future for neutrino physics, is now being explored at first generation radioactive beam facilities. The upgrade towards HIE-ISOLDE aim to consolidate ISOLDE's position as a world leading radioactive nuclear beam facility and it will be a pre-cursor to a future all European ISOL facility, EURISOL, with order of magnitudes higher radioactive beam intensities and energies.
Prerequisite knowledge and references: None
