First Measurement of the Radionuclide Purity of the Therapeutic Isotope ^sup 67^Cu Produced by ^sup 68^Zn(n,x) Reaction Using ^sup nat^C(d,n) Neutrons

We have for the first time studied the radionuclide purity of the therapeutic isotope 67Cu produced by the ... reaction. The neutrons were obtained by the natC(d,n) reaction using 40 MeV deuterons. We measured the ...-ray spectra of the reaction products produced by bombarding an enriched 68ZnO sample with the neutrons with a high-purity Ge detector. We found that the relative production yields of the impurity radionuclides 64Cu, 65Zn, and 69mZn to 67Cu are extremely low. The result indicates that the ... reaction is the most promising among those proposed routes until now for producing high-quality 67Cu, and could solve a longstanding problem of establishing an appropriate production method for 67Cu. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)