Cross section measurements for the production of 49,51 Cr and 47 Sc from proton irradiation of natural vanadium up to 24 MeV.

Scandium-47 is a promising radionuclide for targeted radiotherapy and is also an elementally matched therapeutic partner to ⁴³ Sc and ⁴⁴ Sc, which are suitable for Positron Emission Tomography. The predominantly reported routes for the production of ⁴⁷ Sc employ expensive enriched titanium or calcium targets to achieve high radionuclidic purity. This study reports measurements of the excitation function of the ^nat V(p,x) ⁴⁷ Sc reaction at proton energies of 18-24 MeV to optimize bombardment parameters for the production of ⁴⁷ Sc using this promising approach. The cross-sections reported here demonstrate that irradiation of vanadium targets can produce >99% radionuclidically pure ⁴⁷ Sc with a proton energy of 24 MeV, albeit at modest yields.
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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