Production of Sn and Sn by photonuclear reactions on natural antimony.

Natural antimony targets were irradiated in a 60 MeV bremsstrahlung beam and gamma spectrometric measurements were performed. The goal was to establish the yield of Sn, a radionuclide with great potential for application in medicine. Considering that Sn is predominantly produced through a photonuclear reaction in which an charged particle is emitted (Sb(γ,p3n)), the yield of this tin isotope is much lower than the yields of several antimony isotopes produced in (γ,xn) reactions.