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

We have for the first time studied the radionuclide purity of the therapeutic isotope ⁶⁷Cu produced by the ⁶⁸Zn(n, x)⁶⁷Cu reaction. The neutrons were obtained by the ^natC(d ,n) reaction using 40 MeV deuterons. We measured the γ-ray spectra of the reaction products produced by bombarding an enriched ⁶⁸ZnO sample with the neutrons with a highpurity 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 ⁶⁸Zn(n, x)⁶⁷Cu 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.