Preliminary Results of IS Plasma Focus as a Breeder of Short-Lived Radioisotopes 12C(d,n)13N

Interaction of the high energy deuterons with the graphite target in the plasma focus devices based on Lee model

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Plasma focus devices have been widely used, in the past for manifold applications like x-rays and electron beams lithography, 6 radiography of biological specimens, 7 and as a rich ion source for various material science applications. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] We consider the use of plasma focus devices with sufficient ion energy to produce a number of short lived radioisotopes (SLR) such as 13 N, 17 F, 18 F, 15 O, and 11 C through either external solid (exogenous method) [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] or high atomic number gas (endogenous method) [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] targets. These short lived radioisotopes are positron emitter used for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.…”

“…28,43 The 13 N (half-life t 1/2 ¼ 9.97 min and threshold energy of 0.6 MeV) is a positron emitter when annihilated with electron, consequently, gamma quanta with 511 keV is produced with maximum cross-section of 240 mbarns at 2.3 MeV (Ref. 26) with reasonable cross-section of 100 mbarns above 1 MeV. Nitrogen-13 is used to tag ammonia molecules for PET myocardial perfusion imaging.…”