Deuteron-induced nuclear reactions to produce 177Lu: Extension of cross-sections data up to 33 MeV and impact on purity

Abstract

Activation cross-sections of lutetium and ytterbium radionuclides have been measured by deuteron-induced nuclear reaction on natYb(d,x) at the GIP ARRONAX (Saint-Herblain, France) cyclotron facility with a beam energy up to 33 MeV using the stacked-foil activation technique combined with high resolution γ-ray spectrometry. The measured experimental values enable the extension of the cross-section to higher energies. As a primary objective, we have focused on the cumulative measurement of the direct and indirect production routes of the therapeutic radioisotope 177gLu, via 176Yb(d,n) 177 g,mLu and 176Yb(d,p) 177Yb → 177gLu respectively. Post-irradiation gamma analysis, including a long gamma counting period, was performed to calculate the yield of the undesirable metastable isotopic impurity 177mLu. The results showed that it was found to be lower than our detection limit i.e. <0.0005% of 177gLu yield. Thick target yields for all detected radionuclides are also calculated in this paper. These measurements enabled the estimation of the production yield and isotopic purity of 177Lu obtained via deuteron-induced nuclear reactions for large production batches using highly enriched 176Yb2O3 samples (>99.5%).