Cross sections of deuteron induced reactions on natSm for production of the therapeutic radionuclide 145Sm and 153Sm

At present, targeted radiotherapy (TR) is acknowledged to have great potential in oncology. A large list of interesting radionuclides is identified, including several radioisotopes of lanthanides, amongst them 145Sm and 153Sm. In this work the possibility of their production at a cyclotron was investigated using a deuteron beam and a samarium target. The excitation functions of the natSm(d,x)145,153Sm reactions were determined for deuteron energies up to 50 MeV using the stacked-foil technique and high-resolution γ-ray spectrometry. The measured cross sections and the contributing reactions were analyzed by comparison with results of the ALICE, EMPIRE and TALYS nuclear reaction codes. A short overview and comparison of possible production routes is given.