Measurement of Activation Cross Sections of Erbium Irradiated by Proton Beam

Erbium is one of the rare earth elements which are used to produce therapeutic radioisotopes by charged particle induced reactions, such as proton, deuteron and alpha particle-induced reactions. In this study, production cross sections of Tm-165 and Tm-166 were measured for erbium samples irradiated by a proton beam with E = 45 MeV provided by the MC-50 cyclotron of KIRAMS (Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences). A HPGe detector was used to measure gamma-rays for an activation cross section measurement. A stacked foil technique was adopted to measure the activation cross sections at different proton energies using copper foils as degraders and monitor foils to measure the proton beam current. The SRIM code was used to calculate the energy of the proton beam penetrating each foil. The measured data are compared with other available experimental data and theoretical cross sections calculated by TALYS code.