Nuclear resonant forward scattering of synchrotron radiation from 121Sb at 37.13 keV

We report on the observation of nuclear resonant forward scattering of synchrotron radiation from Sb-121 nuclei. A temperature stabilized alpha-Al2O3 crystal Bragg backscattering high-resolution monochromator with a relative energy resolution of 2 x 10(-7) was introduced. As first spectroscopic applications the hyperfine parameters in Sb2O3, USb and DySb were determined. The energy of the nuclear transition in Sb-121 was measured to be 37.1298(2) keV, 40 times more precisely than reported before. The results open the field of nuclear resonance spectroscopy on antimony compounds taking advantage of the outstanding features of 3rd-generation synchrotron sources. Nuclear resonance scattering on Sb compounds at these sources allows element-specific dynamical studies on thermoelectric materials as well as studies on magnetism in micro- and nanometer dimensional systems like spintronic devices.