Measurements of production cross-sections of medical radioisotopes (57Ni, 55,57,58Co, 54Mn, 51Cr) and other by-products (56Ni, 56Co, 56Mn) from the 59Co(p,x) reactions

Abstract We studied the excitation functions of 59Co(p,x) reactions and measured the production cross-sections of medical radioisotopes (57Ni, 55,57,58Co, 54Mn, 51Cr) and other by-products (56Ni, 56Co, 56Mn) from their threshold to a proton energy of 43.7 MeV. The stacked-foil activation method was employed to irradiate the samples with an external beam from the MC-50 cyclotron at the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences (KIRAMS), Korea. Off-line γ-ray spectrometry was used to measure the activities of the produced radionuclides. The integral yields for the thick target of the investigated radionuclides were also calculated from the measured excitation functions. The measured results were compared with the literature data as well as with theoretical values obtained from the TENDL-2017 library based on the TALYS-1.9 code.