Study of (p,x) reactions in the (CaO)-Ca-nat targets

The development of novel medical radioisotopes for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes is critical for the advancement of personalized nuclear medicine. Radio metals contain promising theranostic pairs and can be used to label proteins and peptides. Scandium radionuclides have recently gained a lot of attention for their radiation characteristics (such as half-life, beta particle and gamma emission energies) in order to improve the efficiency of medical care or therapeutic benefit for specific groups of patients. An accurate understanding of the production cross-sections is required to maximize the production yield and radionuclidic purity, as well as to improve the model predictions. In this paper, we report the measurement of the cross-section of (p,x) reactions for the production of Ca-47,K-42,K-43, and Sc-44m,Sc-46,Sc-47,Sc-48 using (CaO)-Ca-nat targets using proton beam of energy up to 60 MeV. The reported data for Sc-47 is the first experimental data with a (CaO)-Ca-nat target in the 16-60 MeV energy range. All radioisotope cross sections produced by (CaO)-Ca-nat(p, x) reactions are compared to literature data and TALYS predictions.