RESUMO
New production routes for 99Mo are steadily gaining importance. However, the obtained specific activity is much lower than currently produced by the fission of U-235. To be able to supply hospitals with 99Mo/99mTc generators with the desired activity, the adsorption capacity of the column material should be increased. In this paper we have investigated whether the gas phase coating technique Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), which can deposit ultra-thin layers on high surface area materials, can be used to attain materials with high adsorption capacity for 99Mo. For this purpose, ALD was applied on a silica-core sorbent material to coat it with a thin layer of alumina. This sorbent material shows to have a maximum adsorption capacity of 120 mg/g and has a99mTc elution efficiency of 55 ± 2% based on 3 executive elutions.
RESUMO
Cu is an important trace metal which plays a role in many biological processes. The radioisotope 64Cu is often used to study such processes. Furthermore, 64Cu finds applications in cancer diagnostics as well as therapy. For all of these applications 64Cu having high specific activity is needed. 64Cu can be produced in cyclotrons or in nuclear reactors. In this paper we study the effect of gamma dose on the production of 64Cu according to the Szilard-Chalmers reaction using Cu(II)-phthalocyanine as a target. For this purpose, irradiations were performed in the nuclear reactor of the Delft University of Technology using a novel irradiation facility helping to limit the dose produced by gammas present in the reactor pool. The obtained 64Cu activity yield was in general above 60% in accordance to the theoretical expected value. An increase in gamma dose has no significant influence on the obtained activity yield but increases the loss of Cu from Cu(II)-phthalocyanine up to 0.9% and hence decreases the specific activity that can be obtained. However, without optimisation, when reducing the gamma dose specific activities in the order of 30 TBq/g can be achieved.
