Investigation on the production and isolation of ^149,150,151Tb from ¹²C irradiated natural praseodymium target

Abstract

Short lived α-emitting radionuclides have enormous potential to be used in the targeted therapy. 149Tb (4.118 h) is among the few α-emitting radionuclides which are projected for human clinical use. Therefore, direct production of 149Tb was aimed from the 12C induced reaction on natural praseodymium target of 15 mg∕cm2 thickness at 71.5 MeV incident beam energy. No-carrier-added (nca) 149,150,151Tb radionuclides were produced in the target matrix along with 149Gd, which is also the decay product of 149Tb, with relatively high yield of 149Tb. An efficient radiochemical separation method was developed to separate nca 149–151Tb from bulk praseodymium and coproduced Gd by liquid–liquid extraction (LLX) using aqueous HCl and liquid cation extracting agent di-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (HDEHP) dissolved in cyclohexane. Quantitative extraction of nca 149–151Tb was achieved from bulk target with a high separation factor of 4.7×105.

Definitions of radioisotope thick target yields

“…A similar inappropriate approximation is also seen for derivation of the 1-hour EOB yield from the -hour EOB yield by ( = 1 h) ≃ ( )/ . Table 3 shows such an example seen in two articles published in 2011 [29,30]. The corresponding author of these articles later explained that the reported yields were obtained by ( )/ with in hour.…”

“…The corresponding author of these articles later explained that the reported yields were obtained by ( )/ with in hour. Fortunately the irradia- Table 3: Half-life 1/2 , irradiation time , their ratio as well as correction factors for conversion of the thick target yields in [29,30] to the corresponding physical thick target yields ( 1 ) and 1-hour end-of-bombardment (EOB) thick target yield ( 2 ). tion time is well documented in the articles, and therefore we can convert their yields to the corresponding physical and 1-hour EOB thick target yields by applying the correc-…”

Investigation of deuteron-induced reactions on natGd up to 30 MeV: possibility of production of medically relevant 155Tb and 161Tb radioisotopes

“…For 161 Tb, large-scale production method was developed using highly 44 enriched 160 Tb as target and intensive neutron beam from a research reactor [1,6]. Heavy 45 ions ( 12 C-beam) induced nuclear reactions can be also employed for 149 Tb formation 46 however, the accessibility of this type of beam with high intensity, is very limited [7][8][9].…”

Across the energy scale: from eV to GeV

“…This report and Ref. [58] decisively proved neither heavy ion activation nor light particle activation is suitable route to produce 149 Tb. The only option left for production of 149 Tb is spallation of suitable target material.…”