Feasibility of isotope harvesting at a projectile fragmentation facility: ⁶⁷Cu

The work presented here describes a proof-of-principle experiment for the chemical extraction of (67)Cu from an aqueous beam stop at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL). A 76 MeV/A (67)Cu beam was stopped in water, successfully isolated from the aqueous solution through a series of chemical separations involving a chelating disk and anion exchange chromatography, then bound to NOTA-conjugated Herceptin antibodies, and the bound activity was validated using instant thin-layer chromatography (ITLC). The chemical extraction efficiency was found to be 88 ± 3% and the radiochemical yield was ≥95%. These results show that extraction of radioisotopes from an aqueous projectile-fragment beam dump is a feasible method for obtaining radiochemically pure isotopes.