Assessment of production of 66Ga via 66Zn(d,2n)66Ga reaction as a medical radioisotope using GEANT4, MCNPX and TALYS computer nuclear codes

Abstract

66Ga due to its positron emitting and suitable half-life is a medical radioisotope that has been developed for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. While there are several production routes for 66Ga, in this study, production of gallium-66 via the 66Zn(d,2n)66Ga reaction was predicted by GEANT4 and MCNPX nuclear codes. SRIM and TALYS codes are also used in the calculation process. The ranges of deuteron particles in the zinc target are calculated by SRIM and GEANT4 are reported to be 426.64 and 428.08 μm in 16 MeV, respectively. The cross-section values of the reaction estimated by GEANT4 toolkit and four microscopic models of the TALYS code are very close to experimental data. Moreover, the values of 66Ga thick target yields in the zinc target for the energy of 16 MeV of incident deuteron are obtained to be 364.97, 523.11, and 506.6 μCi/μAh by GEANT4, TALYS, and MCNP codes, respectively. The small discrepancy between simulated results and experimental data illustrates that the applied nuclear codes are desirable tools for predicting nuclear reactions in various routes.