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Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Preparing an Isotopically Pure 229Th Ion Beam for Studies of 229mTh
Published on: May 3, 2019
Resonant laser ionization and mass separation of 225Ac
Jake D Johnson1, Michael Heines2, Frank Bruchertseifer3
1KU Leuven, IKS, 3000, Leuven, Belgium. jake.johnson@kuleuven.be.
Abstract:
[Formula: see text]Ac is a radio-isotope that can be linked to biological vector molecules to treat certain distributed cancers using targeted alpha therapy. However, developing [Formula: see text]Ac-labelled radiopharmaceuticals remains a challenge due to the supply shortage of pure [Formula: see text]Ac itself. Several techniques to obtain pure [Formula: see text]Ac are being investigated, amongst which is the high-energy proton spallation of thorium or uranium combined with resonant laser ionization and mass separation. As a proof-of-principle, we perform off-line resonant ionization mass spectrometry on two samples of [Formula: see text]Ac, each with a known activity, in different chemical environments. We report overall operational collection efficiencies of 10.1(2)% and 9.9(8)% for the cases in which the [Formula: see text]Ac was deposited on a rhenium surface and a ThO[Formula: see text] mimic target matrix respectively. The bottleneck of the technique was the laser ionization efficiency, which was deduced to be 15.1(6)%.
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