Resonant laser ionization and mass separation of 225Ac

Jake D. Johnson, Michael Heines, Frank Bruchertseifer, Eric Chevallay, Thomas Elias Cocolios, Kristof Dockx, Charlotte Duchemin, Stephan Heinitz, Reinhard Heinke, Sophie Hurier, Laura Lambert, Benji Leenders, Hanna Skliarova, Thierry Stora, Wiktoria Wojtaczka

Research outputpeer-review

Abstract

225Ac is a radio-isotope that can be linked to biological vector molecules to treat certain distributed cancers using targeted alpha therapy. However, developing 225Ac-labelled radiopharmaceuticals remains a challenge due to the supply shortage of pure 225Ac itself. Several techniques to obtain pure 225Ac are being investigated, amongst which is the high-energy proton spallation of thorium or uranium combined with resonant laser ionization and mass separation. As a proof-of-principle, we perform off-line resonant ionization mass spectrometry on two samples of 225Ac, each with a known activity, in different chemical environments. We report overall operational collection efficiencies of 10.1(2)% and 9.9(8)% for the cases in which the 225Ac was deposited on a rhenium surface and a ThO 2 mimic target matrix respectively. The bottleneck of the technique was the laser ionization efficiency, which was deduced to be 15.1(6)%.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1347
Number of pages11
JournalScientific Reports
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2023

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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