Experimental studies on excitation functions of the proton-induced activation reactions on yttrium

Proton-induced activation cross-sections were measured for the 89Y(p,x)89,88,86Zr, 89Y(p,x)88,87,87m,86Y, 89Y(p,x)85,83,82Sr and 89Y(p,x)84,83Rb reactions by a stacked foil technique in the energy range 15-80 MeV which was covered by two separate measurements for 15-50 and 32-80 MeV energy range with 50 and 80 MeV incident protons. The differences between the results of two irradiations were found within 6% in the overlapping energy regions. The production yields for the long-lived products like 88Zr, and 88Y are significantly larger than that of natMo+p, natNb+p and natZr+p processes. The productions of the medical isotopes, 85Sr and 83Sr are also effective by Y+p process using an 80 MeV beam. Thick target integral yields were also deduced using the measured cross-sections. The 87Y, 88Y, 88Zr and 89Zr radionuclides have suitable yields and decay characteristics important for thin-layer activation (TLA) analysis.