Production of medical Sc radioisotopes with an alpha particle beam

Katarzyna Szkliniarz; Mateusz Sitarz; Rafał Walczak; Jerzy Jastrzębski; Aleksander Bilewicz; Jarosław Choiński; Andrzej Jakubowski; Agnieszka Majkowska; Anna Stolarz; Agnieszka Trzcińska; Wiktor Zipper

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.07.001

Production of medical Sc radioisotopes with an alpha particle beam

Appl Radiat Isot. 2016 Dec:118:182-189. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.07.001. Epub 2016 Jul 4.

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Physics, Department of Nuclear Physics and its Applications, University of Silesia, 40-007 Katowice, Poland.
² Heavy Ion Laboratory, University of Warsaw, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland; Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland.
³ Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology, 03-195 Warszawa, Poland.
⁴ Heavy Ion Laboratory, University of Warsaw, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland. Electronic address: jastj@slcj.uw.edu.pl.
⁵ Heavy Ion Laboratory, University of Warsaw, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland.

PMID: 27642728
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2016.07.001

Abstract

The internal α-particle beam of the Warsaw Heavy Ion Cyclotron was used to produce research quantities of the medically interesting Sc radioisotopes from natural Ca and K and isotopically enriched ⁴²Ca targets. The targets were made of metallic calcium, calcium carbonate and potassium chloride. New data on the production yields and impurities generated during the target irradiations are presented for the positron emitters ⁴³Sc, ^44gSc and ^44mSc. The different paths for the production of the long lived ^44mSc/^44gSc in vivo generator, proposed by the ARRONAX team, using proton and deuteron beams as well as alpha-particle beams are discussed. Due to the larger angular momentum transfer in the formation of the compound nucleus in the case of the alpha particle induced reactions, the isomeric ratio of ^44mSc/^44gSc at a bombarding energy of 29MeV is five times larger than previously determined for a deuteron beam and twenty times larger than for proton induced reactions on enriched CaCO₃ targets. Therefore, formation of this generator via the alpha-particle route seems a very attractive way to form these isotopes. The experimental data presented here are compared with theoretical predictions made using the EMPIRE evaporation code. Reasonable agreement is generally observed.

Keywords: (43,44)Sc radioisotopes; Alpha particle beam; Radioisotope production; Thick Target Yield; in vivo(44m)Sc /(44g)Sc generator.