Recent developments at ISOLTRAP:: towards a relative mass accuracy of exotic nuclei below 10-8

During the last two years, the performance of the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE/CERN (Geneva) has been considerably enhanced. Many technical improvements have been completed (i) to access nuclides that are produced in minute quantities of only 100 ions s-1, (ii) to increase the relative mass accuracy to 1 x 10-8 and (iii) to make accessible nuclei with a half-life of down to 50 ms. The major steps are presented, in particular the recent implementation of a magnetron phase locking mechanism which results in a significant reduction of the duration of ISOLTRAP's cyclotron measurements.