Left to right: Dr Mark Giltrow, Prof Peter V E McClintock, Dr Malcolm Poole

The team uses a powerful wind of normal fluid component in superfluid helium (He II) to blow away all the He-3 impurity atoms, leaving behind only the He-4. The development of this process is described in the following publications -

1. M Atkins and P V E McClintock, "Isotopic purification of He-4", Cryogenics 16, 733-734 (1976).
2. R J Scott and P V E McClintock, "Preparation of isotopically pure He-4 suitable for constructing a high density neutron source", Phys. Lett. A 64, 205-207 (1977).
3. P V E McClintock, "An apparatus for preparing isotopically pure He-4", Cryogenics 18, 201-208 (1978).
4. P V E McClintock, T H Ngan and J C H Small, "A continuous flow helium isotopic separation cryostat", Proc. 16th Int. Conf. on Low Temp. Phys., Los Angeles, 1981, published in Physica 107B, 597-598 (1981).
5. C I Jewell, R Golub and P V E McClintock, "Helium isotopic purification without a superleak", Cryogenics 22, 373-374 (1982).
6. P C Hendry and P V E McClintock, "He-3/He-4 isotopic ratio measurements to below the 10 to the power -12 level", Proc. 17th Conf. on Low Temp. Phys., Karlsruhe, 1984, published by North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1984, pp 417-418.
7. P C Hendry and P V E McClintock, "Helium-4 isotopic purification in continuous flow", Cryogenics 25, 526-527 (1985).
8. P C Hendry and P V E McClintock, "Continuous flow apparatus for preparing isotopically pure He-4", Cryogenics 27, 131-138 (1987).

All of these publications are available on request.