Activation cross sections of deuteron induced reactions on natHf in the 12–50 MeV energy range

Abstract As a part of our systematical study of activation cross sections of deuteron induced nuclear reactions, cross sections on hafnium were investigated up to 50 MeV. Excitation functions were measured for the nat Hf(d,xn) 178g,177,176,175,173 Ta, nat Hf(d,x) 181,180m,179m2,175,173,172 Hf, nat Hf(d,x) 173,172,171,170 Lu and nat Hf(d,x) 169 Yb reactions by using the activation method, stacked foil irradiation technique and off-line gamma-ray spectrometry for quantification of the produced radionuclides. The experimental results are compared with the earlier results in the overlapping energy range, and with the theoretical predictions of the ALICE IPPE-D and EMPIRE II-D theoretical codes and with values reported in the TENDL-2017 on-line library obtained with the TALYS code.