Module-assisted preparation of 64Cu with high specific activity

Abstract

In this work the production of (64)Cu via the (64)Ni(p,n)(64)Cu reaction with optimized conditions for low current irradiation is presented. Different target setups and cleaning steps for lowering metal contaminations in the product were applied. (64)Cu with high specific activities up to 1685 GBq/μmol was produced despite low overall activity (≈ 4.2 GBq per run). The module processing leads to a highly reproducible, reliable product quality (<1 μg Cu and <7 μg Ni). Besides its diagnostic value (64)Cu may be of interest even for therapeutic purposes due to its decay characteristics.