Zn Radioisotope Production by Cyclotron

Natural Cu target was irradiated with proton beam in the energy range of 15 to 30 MeV at a beam current of 100 μA for 15 min. In this irradiation radioisotope of 62Zn was produced as a generator and then decayed to Cu radioisotope. The Cu is emitting β+ and known as PET radioisotope. Excitation function of Cu via Cu (p, 2n) Zn, Cu and Cu (d, 3n) Zn reactions were calculated using Alice and Talys codes and then were compared with the reported measurement by experimental data and ENDF-2013 data. Production yield versus target thickness were evaluated with attention to reaction cross section data obtained from Alice and Talys codes, and stopping power and range of protons in target materials using SRIM code. The production yield also examined experimentally and found that the optimum irradiation yield achieved to be 5.9 mci/μAh at protons of 100 μA current and 30MeV energy. A radiolabeling process also was performed using Zncl2 and antitumor compound, Bleomycin (BLM) as a possible tumour imaging particle tracking. INTRODUCTION The shortlived generator produced β+ emitter Cu (T= 9.7 min), has found application in blood flow studies in heart and brain using positron emission tomography (PET). This is of special interest for clinics having PET but no cyclotron. This radio isotope is obtained via the Zn/Cu generator system, the parent Zn (T=9.3h) being produced via the Cu (p, 2n) process at mediumsized cyclotron [1]. Considering that cyclotron available for routine radioisotope productions accelerate particles of proton and very seldom deuteron that the maximum of proton’s energy is 30 MeV and that of deuteron is 15 MeV and only the reaction resulting from proton and deuteron are accomplishable for generating zinc-62. Our irradiated target was natural copper and contains both Cu and Cu therefore, we’ll analyse the reaction creating from Cu and Cu in this study. The aim of this work was the investigation of excitation function of Cu (p, 2n) Zn→ Cu and Cu (d, 3n) Zn reactions and their comparison with ENDF-2013 database. The Alice/ Talys Code The ALICE/ASH code is a modified and advanced version of the ALICE/91 code. This code has been written to study the interaction of intermediate energy nucleons and nuclei with target nuclei. The code calculates energy and angular distributions of particles emitted in nuclear reactions, residual nuclear yields, and total nonelastic cross-sections for nuclear reactions induced by particles and nuclei with energies up to 300 MeV. The parameters used in the ALICE/ASH code are as follow: (i) the Weisskopf–Ewing model for equilibrium calculations (ii) The hybrid model and geometry dependent hybrid model (GDH) for pre-equilibrium emissions [2]. TALYS aims to comprise important aspects such as physical quality, flexibility, robustness, completeness and efficiency into one software package [3]. Calculation of the Physical Yield and the Target Thickness Theoretical physical yield can be calculated by the following equation: