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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