.

There are two main cyclotron techniques used to produce the parent Rb81 solution

The first uses alpha particle bombardment on a Sodium Bromide target. The reaction is

                                        alpha --> Bromine ,  (n,p)    -->   Rb81

The preferred reaction needs 40Mev alpha particles.

The disadvantage of this reaction is that several other Rb radioisotopes are also produced, in particular Rb81m, Rb82, Rb83 and Rb84. The Rb81m decays to Rb81 by isomeric decay. However the other Rb radioisotopes simply add to external radiation exposure from the generator.

The second reaction is a high energy proton reaction with enriched Krypton gas. This is rather more efficient than the alpha-Bromine reaction and generally produces smaller levels of other Rubidium radioisotopes, although this is very dependent on the degree of enrichment of the Kr gas target. Careful target design is needed though since enriched krypton gas is very expensive; any leak is qute costly!

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Last modified: May 17, 2011