Design and testing of a W-MoO3 target system for electron linac production of 99Mo/99mTc

Abstract To improve the efficiency of electron linear accelerator production of 99Mo/99mTc, a W-MoO3 target system was designed and its 99Mo production performance was tested. Irradiation experiments were carried out for sets of electron beam energies and W thicknesses, and compared with Monte Carlo simulations. The optimal W thicknesses of the target system were found to be 1.5 mm, 2.5 mm, and 3.0 mm for electron beams of 22.2 MeV, 38.9 MeV, and 55.5 MeV, respectively. The use of these W thicknesses can improve the 99Mo production performance, and the use of MoO3 targets can facilitate postirradiation processing.