⁹⁹Mo Radioisotope Production

The goal of the present work is to obtain the cross-section for the ⁹⁹Mo radioisotope production. The ⁹⁹Mo is used as a medical radioisotope very important in nuclear medicine for diagnostic imaging procedures. The production was performed by using inverse kinematics with a ¹⁰⁰Mo ion beam impinging on a ⁴He gas cell target. The experiment took place in the K500 Superconducting cyclotron facility at the Texas A&M University. The 12 MeV/u ¹⁰⁰Mo beam enters the gas cell target filled with ⁴He gas cooled to 77 K with three different pressures at 102 Torr, 213 Torr, and 1009 Torr. After passing the gas cell the beam stops at a thick Al foil. All the radioisotopes produced during the irradiation are also collected at the Al foil. An offline gamma analysis of the irradiated Al foils was performed and the respective activities at End of Bombardment were obtained. The beam energy loss for the two lower pressures irradiation is small enough in respect to the incident beam energy, DE/E = 0.03 and 0.07 respectively, to be treated as thin targets. On the other hand, the high pressure gas irradiation is considered to be a thick target. The cross section for the ⁹⁹Mo production was determined considering the contribution from the beam interaction with the gas, α(¹⁰⁰Mo, ⁹⁹Mo) ⁵He, and with the Al foil , ²⁷Al(¹⁰⁰Mo, ⁹⁹Mo) ²⁸Al.