Study of the ¹⁹⁹Au nanoparticles production parameters via irradiation of platinum target by using thermal neutrons

In this study, the production parameters of ¹⁹⁹Au nanoparticles (¹⁹⁹AuNPs) have been investigated by a two-part study. The first part is about investigating the indirect method of producing non-carrier-added (NCA) ¹⁹⁹Au radionuclide. MCNPX-2.6, TALYS-1.9, and ALICE/ASH-0.1 codes were applied as the theoretical approach to simulate the core of Tehran research reactor (TRR) for determining the activity of ¹⁹⁹Au, specifying the production yield of ¹⁹⁹Au, and calculating the excitation function of P198t(n,γ)P199t→A199u reaction. As the corresponding experimental approach, two 11 mg and 15.5 mg samples of enriched ¹⁹⁸Pt metal powder were irradiated by thermal neutrons for 21 h and 10 min. The liquid-liquid extraction (LLX) technique has been used with a different solvent for each sample. LLX using ethyl acetate and LLX using Di-(2-Ethylhexyl) phosphoric acid (HDEHP) were applied for the 15.5 mg and the 11 mg samples respectively. The chemical yield of ¹⁹⁹Au was calculated more than %99 for the 15.5 mg sample, and more than %80 for the 11 mg sample. The second part is about synthesizing ¹⁹⁹AuNPs in an average size of 50 nm by using Turkevich method.