Photonuclear production of medical radioisotopes 161 Tb and 155 Tb.

The production possibility of ¹⁶¹ Tb and ¹⁵⁵ Tb by irradiating of natural dysprosium with gamma rays obtained by decelerating an electron beam with an energy of 55 MeV has been demonstrated experimentally. The yield of ¹⁶¹ Tb was 14.4 × 10 ³ Bq × μA ^-1  × h ^-1  × cm ² × g _Dy2O3 ^-1 . Simultaneously, upon irradiation, ¹⁵⁵ Dy is formed with the yield of 25 × 10 ³ Bq × μA ^-1  × h ^-1  × cm ² × g _Dy2O3 ^-1 , which leads to the formation of 1.6 × 10 ³ Bq × μA ^-1  × h ^-1  × cm ² × g _Dy2O3 ^-1 of ¹⁵⁵ Tb. It has been shown that the isolation of terbium radioisotopes from tens of mg of dysprosium target can be achieved by extraction chromatography, and final separation yield was 39%. The impurity of ¹⁶⁰ Tb is 7.3% of the ¹⁶¹ Tb activity at EOB.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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