Measurement of thick target yields of the natS(α,x)34mCl nuclear reaction and estimation of its excitation function up to 70 MeV

Can We Extract Production Cross-Sections from Thick Target Yield Measurements? A Case Study Using Scandium Radioisotopes

“…In this work, we want to complement our research by evaluating the 43 Ca(p,n) 43 Sc,44 Ca(p,n) 44g Sc,44 Ca(p,n) 44m Sc, 48 Ca(p,2n) 47 Sc and 48 Ca(p,n) 48 Sc cross-sections based on reported TTY measurements (the latter is not medically relevant, but 48 Sc production is important as it is a radioactive impurity). A similar attempt has already been proposed in [21] for the study of 34m Cl production. In this work, we verify this approach for above-mentioned reactions while employing a different, straight-forward numerical algorithm (our Python code is submitted in the Supplementary Materials to this paper).…”

“…Alternatively, in [21], the cross-section was reconstructed after fitting the TTY curve by calculating target yields (TY) for thicknesses corresponding to 0.1 MeV projectile energy loss each 1 MeV and multiplied by projectile range. This method assumes the constant stopping-power in each layer.…”

Cross sections of the 36Ar(d,α)34mCl, 40Ar(d,α)38Cl, and 40Ar(d,p)41Ar nuclear reactions below 8.4MeV

“…Though a variety of chalcogen targets have been used to produce 34m Cl, only alpha irradiations of sulfur targets with natural isotopic abundance have been used routinely or produced radioisotope in sufficient quantity and chemical utility for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging (Takei et al ., 2007). While reported thick target yields for sulfur irradiations exceed those we have measured for deuteron bombardments of argon, accelerator targetry using sulphur and its compounds is problematic due to the element’s poor thermal and electrical conductivity, low melting point, and tendency to sublime (Abrams et al ., 1984; Nagatsu et al ., 2008). Irradiations of argon gas, by contrast, offer the prospect of clean separation chemistry and facile 36 Ar recovery using cryotrapping techniques, which, at Wisconsin, average >99.5% over more than 40 cycles.…”