Laser isotope separation of 176Yb for medical applications

The radioisotope, Lu-177, is emerging as a promising isotope for a variety of medical applications such as cancer treatment. Enriched Yb-176 can be used as a source material for the production of Lu-177 in an atomic reactor. For these applications, we have developed a laser separation technology based on isotopic selective photoionization to enrich the stable Yb-176 isotope. Our separation system consists of three dye lasers, a Yb vaporizer, and an ion-extraction system. Especially, we use a compact diode-pumped solid-state laser as the pumping source of the dye lasers. With the developed system, we succeeded in producing enriched Yb-176 with an abundance of more than 97%.