Preparation and measurement of the half-life of 101Tc

101Tc is a very important nuclide as fuel burn up monitor, and its half-life value has been measured many times, however, they were so different from each other. In this work, 101Tc liquid samples were prepared by irradiating analytical pure (NH4)6Mo7O24·4H2O solution in Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) of China. A rapid procedure which takes only 5 min was developed to separate 101Tc samples. The final samples were analyzed by γ-ray spectrum using high purity Germanium (HPGe) multi-channel analysis system. The results showed that there were no peaks of other nuclides except 101Tc. The half-life of 101Tc was accurately measured with HPGe γ-detector following 306.8 keV γ-ray for about 140 min, and three methods R-value method, iterative method and translation method were adopted to process the data. Finally, a more precise and accurate value 14.02 ± 0.01 min was given and compared with former measured data.