The post says astatine's radioactivity is so high a small sample would vaporize itself, so it can't exist in a condensed phase that would be convenient to study

The post says astatine's radioactivity is so high a small sample would vaporize itself, so it can't exist in a condensed phase that would be convenient to study. It can be made by exposing bismuth-209 to an alpha particle beam. As the post says, this is a cooling problem. I wonder if it would work to deposit a thin film of Bi-209 on a thin diamond plate, the other side cooled by liquid nitrogen. Bombard the bismuth with alpha to make astatine. The diamond's very high thermal conductivity (peaks at over 40,000W/m-°K at ~ 100°K [1]) could keep the mixed bismuth/astatine film in solid form. Since you'd want to do the alpha irradiation in a vacuum, the setup would allow for a wide range of surface characterization techniques. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond#Thermal_conductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_properties_of_diamond...