Nuclear model calculation for cyclotron production of 61 Cu as a PET imaging Mahdi Sadeghi • Nadia Zandi • Mahdi Bakhtiari Received: 11 October 2011 / Published online: 21 December 2011 Ó Akade ´miai Kiado ´, Budapest, Hungary 2011 Abstract 61 Cu is positron emitter and can be used as the PET and molecular imaging. In this study cyclotron produc- tion of 61 Cu via 61 Ni(p,n) 61 Cu, nat Ni(p,x) 61 Cu, nat Ni(d,x) 61 Cu, nat Ni(a,x) 61 Cu, nat Zn(p,x) 61 Cu and 59 Co(a,2n) 61 Cu reactions was investigated. The ALICE/ASH (hybrid and GDH mod- els) and TALYS-1.2 codes were used to calculate excitation functions for proton, alpha and deuteron induced on nat Ni, proton on 61 Ni and nat Zn and also alpha-particle on 59 Co targets that lead to the production of 61 Cu radioisotopes using intermediate energy accelerators. In addition, we compared the data obtained from in this study with the reported mea- surement by experimental data. Moreover, optimal thickness of the targets and physical yield were obtained by stopping and range of ions in matter code for each reaction. Eventually 61 Ni(p,n) 61 Cu and 59 Co(a,2n) 61 Cu reaction to produce 61 Cu in no-carrier added state with high production yield was suggested. Finally the nat Ni(p,x) 61 Cu reaction was employed to test the target preparation using electroplating technique. Keywords Excitation function  61 Cu  Physical yield  TALYS-1.2  ALICE/ASH  Ni electroplating Introduction Copper has many radio-nuclides ( 60 Cu, 61 Cu, 62 Cu, 64 Cu, and 67 Cu) that can be used in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging [1, 2]. 61 Cu offers several advantages over other Cu radioisotopes for labeling radiopharmaceu- ticals for positron emission tomography (PET). Interest- ingly, it has been shown that the tomographic images obtained using 61 Cu are superior to those using 64 Cu, based on the larger abundance of positrons emitted by 61 Cu compared with 64 Cu [3]. 61 Cu is a positron emitter (T 1/2 = 3.33 h, b ? : 62%, EC: 38%), with excellent potentials for application in the PET method and molecular imaging [4]. Molecular imaging is a new biomedical research discipline enabling the visualization, character- ization, and quantification of biologic processes taking place at the cellular and sub-cellular levels within intact living subjects including patients [5]. In our previous articles, we evaluated cyclotron pro- duction parameters of 172 Lu, 93m Mo, 122 Sb, and 109 Cd via various codes and compared with existing data [6–9]. In this work, several methods for 61 Cu production using TALYS-1.2 and ALICE/ASH (hybrid and GDH models) codes have been studied. There are different methods to produce 61 Cu via proton, deuteron and alpha particles on various targets such as nat Ni, 61 Ni, nat Zn, nat Cu and 59 Co [10–34]. The aim of the presented study is to compare the calculated cross sections for the production of 61 Cu via different reactions with incident particle energy up to 50 MeV as a part of systematic studies on particle-induced activations on metal targets, theoretical calculation of physical yield, calculation of target thickness requirement and suggestion for optimum reaction to produce 61 Cu. Theoretical calculation of physical yield and target thick- ness was done using Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter M. Sadeghi (&) Agricultural, Medical & Industrial Research School, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, P.O. Box 31485/498, Karaj, Tehran, Iran e-mail: msadeghi@nrcam.org N. Zandi Department of Nuclear Engineering and Physics, Amir-kabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran M. Bakhtiari Department of Physics, Boroujerd Branch, Islamic Azad University, Boroujerd, Iran 123 J Radioanal Nucl Chem (2012) 292:777–783 DOI 10.1007/s10967-011-1557-1