Experimental study and simulation of 63Zn production via proton induce reaction

The 63Zn was produced by16.8 MeV proton irradiation of natural copper. Thick target yield for 63Zn in the energy range of 16.8 →12.2 MeV was 2.47 ± 0.12 GBq/μA.h. Reasonable agreement between achieved experimental data and theoretical value of thick target yield for 63Zn was observed. A simple separation procedure of 63Zn from copper target was developed using cation exchange chromatography. About 88 ± 5% of the loaded activity was recovered. The performance of FLUKA to reproduce experimental data of thick target yield of 63Zn is validated. The achieved results from this code were compared with the corresponding experimental data. This comparison demonstrated that FLUKA provides a suitable tool for the simulation of radionuclide production using proton irradiation.