Cyclotron production and radiochemical separation of Co and Co from Fe, Ni and Fe targets.

This work presents the production with a cyclotron of the positron emitter Co via the Fe(d,n) and Ni(p,α) reactions and the Auger electron emitter Co via the Fe(d,n) reaction after high current (40μA p and 60μA d) irradiation on electroplated targets. High specific activity radionuclides (up to 55.6 GBq/μmol Co and 31.8GBq/μmol Co) with high radionuclidic purity (99.995% Co from Fe, 98.8% Co from Ni, and 98.7% Co from Fe at end of bombardment, EoB), in high activity concentration (final separated radionuclide in < 0.6mL) and with almost quantitative overall activity separation yield (> 92%) were obtained after processing of the irradiated targets with novel radiochemical separation methods based on HCl dissolution and the resin N,N,N',N'-tetrakis-2-ethylhexyldiglycolamide (DGA, branched). One hour long irradiations using 38-65, 110-214 and 59-78mg of enriched Fe (99.93%), Ni (99.48%) and Fe (95.06%), respectively, electroplated over a 1.0cm surface, yielded 58 ± 66MBq Co, 372 ± 14MBq Co and 810 ± 186MBq Co, respectively, decay corrected to EoB. The separation methods allow for the recovery of the costly enriched target materials, which were reconstituted into metallic targets after novel electroplating methods, with an overall recycling efficiency of 93 ± 4% for iron. The produced radionuclides were used to radiolabel the angiogenesis marker antibody TRC105 conjugated to the chelator NOTA as a demonstration of their quality.