HPGe Research Articles

Geochemical characteristics, hazards impact assessment and radiogenic heat production of the alkaline rocks.

This study primarily investigates the natural radioactivity level in alkaline rocks collected from the Wadi El-Dib ring complex (WDRC) in North Eastern Desert of Egypt, and assesses potential health risks associated with their use as decorative building materials. The work was accomplished using a high-purity germanium detector as well as ICP-MS and ICP-AES techniques. The WDRC composed essentially of trachyte, quartz syenite, granite and syenite. Geochemically, these rocks contain high SiO2 and alkalis with metaluminous to slightly peraluminous features. All rocks contain high concentrations of rare earth elements (∑REEs = 109-1075ppm), with clear enrichment in light REEs compared to heavy REEs [(La/Yb)N = 8.3-25.3. Radiometrically, the concentrations of the natural radioisotopes (238U, 232Th, and 40K) in the studied rock types surpassed the worldwide average values assigned for building materials by UNSCEAR. This elevation of the radioisotope concentration values is due to the presence of supplement minerals such as monazite, zircon, allanite, and rutile. Granites exhibit the highest mean concentrations of 238U (av. 164.24 ± 14.76Bq/kg) and 232Th (av. 214.37 ± 23.33Bq/kg), while trachytes demonstrate the highest 40K (av. 1352.56 ± 65.56Bq/kg) concentrations. In contrast, syenites exhibite the lowest mean concentrations for 238U (av. 54.51 ± 6.81Bq/kg) and 232Th (av. 56.76 ± 6.25Bq/kg), while quartz syenites display the lowest mean concentration of 40K (av. 1144.78 ± 96.19Bq/kg). The radiogenic heat production (RHP) associated with U, Th, and K range between 1.41 to 9.33μW/m3, exceeding the typical crustal mean value of 0.8 to 1.2μW/m3. The radiological parameters and indices evaluating risks of the outdoor and indoor radiation doses due to the investigated rocks were assessed. The results indicated that these rocks meet globally accepted values and safety standards (approved by UNSCEAR, ICRP, and EC) for surface building materials, as well as they underscore the importance of adhering to safety protocols to safeguard workers from radiation exposure within the WDRC area. Ultimately, the data herein provide a valuable database for assessing the compatibility of geochemical data and natural radioactivity level in WDRC rocks. Additionally, it reveals that from the radiological perspective, the investigated rocks are considered safe for use as decorative construction materials.

Energy Resolution from a Silicon Detector's Interstrip Regions.

In this work, we present a novel approach for improving the energy resolution from particles impinging on the interstrip regions of silicon strip detectors. We employed three double-sided strip detectors from the GRIT array and a triple α-source under laboratory conditions. The results showed that the interstrip resolution depends not only on the impinging side but also on whether it is a P- or an N-interstrip. We obtained the interstrip energy resolution down to 0.4%, and, depending on the scenario, the resolution was enhanced by a factor of 2. We believe that this new rotation method allows for the possibility of applying particle identification methods on interstrip events, which in most cases are dismissed during data recording.

Radon exhalation and health hazard assessment for various ceramic tiles used in Bangladesh

Objective: Among various building materials, tiles are the most used decorative materials used worldwide. For the safe use of tiles at home and workplace it is required to select them properly based on radiation dose due to radon and gamma emission.
 Experiments: Among various tiles available in the market, 25 different types of tiles were collected for this experiment. Collected tiles are then ground and stored in sealed cans for secular equilibrium. To measure gamma activity due to the radionuclides 226Ra, 232Th, 40K, High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector was used. To store radon gas emitting from tiles, a big box was used. The activity concentration was then measured by a radon detector (RadonEye) by placing it inside the box.
 Results and discussion: It was observed that 226Ra, 232Th, 40K activity varies from 45 – 89 Bq/Kg, 77 – 110 Bq/Kg, and 321 – 694 Bq/Kg. The radium equivalent activity varies from 198.32 – 280.46 Bq/Kg, less than the recommended value of 370 Bq/Kg set by UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation). The activity concentration of radon varies from 31 – 71 Bq/m3. This is lower than the 300 Bq/m3 recommended by ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection). The radon exhalation rate varies from 0.179 – 0.409 Bqm−2h−1. To assess radiological hazards associated with the tiles samples air absorbed dose rate, internal and external hazard index, gamma index, annual indoor and outdoor effective dose rate, and dose due to radon were also calculated.
 Conclusion: Though the estimated values for external and internal hazards are below the recommended values, they may be safe for adults. As children have thinner skin and breathe more air due to high breathing frequency, they may receive more radiation than adults. Moreover, they are at a greater risk because of their developing bodies and long life expectancy post-exposure.

Development of pixelated silicon detector for AMS study

A pixelated silicon detector (PSD) has been developed for the position-sensitive detector on a focal plane of an accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) system in Yamagata University (YU). The YU-AMS system measures the relative abundances of the carbon isotopes 14C, 13C, and 12C for radiocarbon dating. The beam of the rare isotope 14C is transported to the focal plane of the AMS system. When the focal plane detector is position-sensitive to the beam, it can be utilized for beam diagnostics on the AMS beamline to achieve 14C measurement with high accuracy. To investigate the characteristics of the PSD, α particles from 241Am were irradiated on the PSD. A beam test using 14C was also performed to evaluate the size and position of the 14C beam on the focal plane of the YU-AMS system.

Risk Assessment of Natural Radionuclides and Trace Elements of Industrial Activities in Suez Bay

ABSTRACT The study aims to assess the marine environmental hazards resulting from some industrial activities areas being found at the Suez Bay. The survey was done to select five industrial locations along the studied areas where different water and sediment samples were collected during September 2020. The study methods showed that different concentrations were measured in the collected water and sediment samples, such as; Al, Fe, Mn, Hg, Cd, Cr, Co, Mo, V, Pb, Ni, Cu, Zn, where the digested samples were measured by using Inductively Coupled Argon Plasma spectroscopy (ICAP 6500 Duo), while the natural radioactivity concentrations of the selected radio-nuclides such as 238U, 226Ra, 232Th, 40K, were measured in both water and sediments samples by using Hyper germanium detector, as the radiological risk assessment of different samples was detected by using ERICA modeling software. The study results showed that the concentrations of the measured trace elements in the selected five industrial sites were slightly higher than the standard limits, while the measured radioactivity concentrations of the selected radio-nuclides in both water and sediment samples were below the standard limits. The results showed that the calculated distribution coefficient of the selected trace elements was (Kd Metal Pollution Index < 3), which indicated that the measured trace elements were more dissolved in the aqueous than the sediment medium. The study used the mean probable effect Level (m-PEL-Q) for estimating the metal concentration hazards in the sediment samples at the selected sites, where these values were ranged from 0.04 to 0.1, indicating that the combined concentration effects for these metals were caused 9% toxic probability. The study showed that both the calculated quotient risk (QR) and dose rate values of the marine organisms which were being calculated by the ERICA model were below the recommended limits.

Optimization of a BEGe Detector Setup for Testing Quantum Foundations in the Underground LNGS Laboratory

In this work, we report on tests performed with an experimental apparatus prototype based on a broad-energy germanium detector aimed at investigating topical, foundational issues in quantum mechanics: i.e., possible violations of the spin-statistics connection and models of dynamical wave function collapse. Our recent phenomenological analyses demonstrated the importance of pushing the research of new physics signal, predicted in these fields, to an energy range below 10 keV. We describe the development of the dedicated data acquisition system and of the pulse shape discrimination algorithm, which have already allowed us to get a factor two improvement in the lower energy threshold. Future plans are discussed to further improve the lower energy threshold to the level of a few keV.

Highly efficient visible and near-IR photon pair generation with thin-film lithium niobate

Efficient on-chip entangled photon pair generation at telecom wavelengths is an integral aspect of emerging quantum optical technologies, particularly for quantum communication and computing. However, moving to shorter wavelengths enables the use of more accessible silicon detector technology, and opens up applications in imaging and spectroscopy. Here, we present high brightness ((1.6 ± 0.3) × 109 pairs/s/mW/nm) visible–near-IR photon pair generation in a periodically poled lithium niobate nanophotonic waveguide. The degenerate spectrum of the photon pairs is centered at 811 nm with a bandwidth of 117 nm when pumped with a spectrally multimode laser diode. The measured on-chip source efficiency of (2.3 ± 0.5) × 1011 pairs/s/mW is on par with source efficiencies at telecom wavelengths and is also orders of magnitude higher than the efficiencies of other visible sources implemented in bulk crystal or diffused waveguide-based technologies. Further improvements in the brightness and efficiencies are possible by pumping the device with a single-frequency laser, which would also shrink the pair bandwidth. These results represent the shortest wavelength of photon pairs generated in a nanophotonic waveguide reported to date by nearly an octave.

Influence of short lived radon and thoron progeny on the γ-spectroscopic analysis of low activity environmental and aerosol samples

In this work, the influence of radon and thoron progeny photons in γ-spectrometry analysis is thoroughly investigated. To this end three sampling and analysis campaigns were organized at the γ-spectrometry laboratory of Nuclear Engineering Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens (NEL-NTUA), combining measurements of radon and its progeny via an ALPHAGUARD-ALPHAPM set up with background spectra of four germanium detectors as well as with outdoors meteorological conditions. Good statistical correlations were found between radon and its progeny with the respective photopeaks of the germanium detectors’ background as well as with meteorological conditions outdoors. Additionally, in all four detectors, six consecutive 2-day background spectra were compared with each other, with their mean and with the summed 12-day background spectrum, in order to study the photopeak background fluctuation and estimate the relevant uncertainties. This study supported the decision for the most suitable background spectrum to be used in γ-spectrometry analysis. Finally, in order to investigate the effect of both radon and thoron progeny on the MDA of typical radionuclides likely to be detected in aerosol samples, a series of air-sampling and γ-spectroscopic analysis scenarios were tested.

High-purity germanium semiconductor modeling in the detector response function toolkit

We have extended the detector response function toolkit (DRiFT) to provide modeling capabilities of semiconductor sensors. DRiFT provides realistic nuclear instrumentation response by post-processing Monte-Carlo N-particle (MCNP®) radiation transport outputs. MCNP® is capable of modeling radiation transport in complex environments, but has limited detector physics and readout electronics modeling capabilities. Semiconductor detector response can be calculated with a high-fidelity for a flexible range of environments by utilizing MCNP® to simulate radiation interactions inside of detector volumes, and then using DRiFT to model charge transport and signal formation in the semiconductor, as well as the readout electronics. DRiFT models charge transport in the semiconductor, the preamplifier, shaping amplifier, pulse pile-up, and electronic noise to generate detector response. The semiconductor application in DRiFT can model a range of semiconductor materials, shapes, and sizes; and is demonstrated here for a large volume coaxial high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector. Here, we compare detector response functions of a coaxial HPGe detector with measurement of 60Co, 133Ba, and 137Cs at varying count rates, and we conduct a parameter study to demonstrate the effect of changing parameters in the DRiFT simulation. The HPGe detector response function shows excellent agreement with measurements of difference sources with varying dead times and count rates.

A physics based machine learning model to characterize room temperature semiconductor detectors in 3D

Room temperature semiconductor radiation detectors (RTSD) for X-ray and γ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\gamma$$\\end{document}-ray detection are vital tools for medical imaging, astrophysics and other applications. CdZnTe (CZT) has been the main RTSD for more than three decades with desired detection properties. In a typical pixelated configuration, CZT have electrodes on opposite ends. For advanced event reconstruction algorithms at sub-pixel level, detailed characterization of the RTSD is required in three dimensional (3D) space. However, 3D characterization of the material defects and charge transport properties in the sub-pixel regime is a labor intensive process with skilled manpower and novel experimental setups. Presently, state-of-art characterization is done over the bulk of the RTSD considering homogenous properties. In this paper, we propose a novel physics based machine learning (PBML) model to characterize the RTSD over a discretized sub-pixelated 3D volume which is assumed. Our novel approach is the first to characterize a full 3D charge transport model of the RTSD. In this work, we first discretize the RTSD between a pixelated electrodes spatially into 3 dimensions—x, y, and z. The resulting discretizations are termed as voxels in 3D space. In each voxel, the different physics based charge transport properties such as drift, trapping, detrapping and recombination of charges are modeled as trainable model weights. The drift of the charges considers second order non-linear motion which is observed in practice with the RTSDs. Based on the electron–hole pair injections as input to the PBML model, and signals at the electrodes, free and trapped charges (electrons and holes) as outputs of the model, the PBML model determines the trainable weights by backpropagating the loss function. The trained weights of the model represents one-to-one relation to that of the actual physical charge transport properties in a voxelized detector.

Characterization of the radiation tolerant ToASt ASIC for the readout of the PANDA MVD strip detector

The ToASt ASIC is a 64-channel integrated circuit developed for the readout of the Silicon strip detector project designed to be placed in the Micro-Vertex Detector of the PANDA experiment. ToASt is implemented in a commercial 110 nm CMOS technology and can provide information on the position, time, and deposited energy of the particle passing through the detector. Its time resolution is given by its 160 MHz master clock.The ASIC has been developed in the framework of the European FAIRnet project.The chip has been characterized electrically both standalone and coupled with sensors, with focus on its noise performances. It has also been tested for radiation tolerance, both in terms of Total Ionizing Dose and Single Event Upset.In particular, this work aims to guarantee that the studied ASICs can sustain the levels of ionizing radiation expected in the PANDA experiment and to study the noise characteristics for the two polarities of the ASIC.

Radiological Assessment and Potential Health Risks of Tailings from Komu, Southwestern Nigeria

There are reports that radionuclides found in mining tailings pose significant challenges to the natural environment and cause health risks to humans. The study investigated the levels of activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K radionuclides, as well as radiological hazard indices in tailings sourced from Komu, a community emblematic of mining activities in the Southwest of Nigeria. Thirty (30) tailing samples were collected and analysed by a High-purity Germanium (HpGe) detector. The results revealed high activity concentrations of these radionuclides exceeding global averages and indicating potential health risks. The activity concentration of 226Ra ranged between 312.07 and 851.14 Bq/kg, with an average of 652.86 Bq/kg. Similarly, the activity concentration of 232Th ranged between 33.31 and 160.10 Bq/kg, with an average of 116.26 Bq/kg. In addition, the activity concentration of 40K ranged between 96.11 and 1184.65 Bq/kg, with an average of 717.53 Bq/kg. The radiological hazard indices considered in this study exceeded the internationally accepted safety limit for building construction materials. These findings indicate heightened exposure risks, emphasizing the need for regulatory measures to mitigate hazards associated with tailings sourced from Komu, particularly for building construction purposes.

Novel device to study double-alpha decay at the FRS Ion Catcher

A novel system has been developed to detect simultaneous double-alpha emission from purified and weightless sources. The system includes the collection of 224Ra low-energy recoils in purified helium buffer gas from the decay of 228Th. The recoil products are thermalized and collected in a cryogenic buffer gas cell and extracted into an RF-ion guide for mass selection. The mass-separated ions are implanted at low kinetic energy into a thin carbon foil placed between two large-area double-sided silicon strip detectors to observe correlated alpha-particle emission. The apparatus is described in detail, including insights into its experimental performance.

Experimental Study to Determine the Backscattering, Asymmetry, and Tailing Factors for Some Elements in the Atomic Number Range of 4≤Z≤48 at 59.54 keV Using the Gamma Backscattering Method

This experimental study has been carried out by using gamma backscattering method which is a non-destructive method. Some elements which are in the atomic number range of 4≤Z≤48 have been used as backscatterer samples to investigate the variation of backscattering factor, asymmetry factor, and tailing factor with atomic number. These samples were irradiated by γ-rays of 59.54 keV energy emitted from a 10 μCi 241Am point radioactive source. To count the backscattered photons from samples, a high purity germanium detector (HPGe) with a resolution of 182 eV at 5.9 keV and active area of 200 mm2 was used. It was concluded that the count rate and backscattering factor increased with increasing atomic number, but the coherent to backscattering ratio, asymmetry factor, and tailing factor decreased.

Light and gas dual-function detection and mutual enhancement based on hyperdoped black silicon

We introduce a unique dual-function detector with an asymmetric light illumination based on the black silicon co-hyperdoped with sulfur and nitrogen for light and gas detection, and the properties in NO2 gas sensing and photoelectric detection are studied under various light and gas environments, respectively. Enhanced performance of the device under certain light and gas conditions is observed. When illuminated at the optimal wavelength, the gas sensors’ responsivity to NO2 can be enhanced by approximately 5 to 200 times over 730 nm illumination, respectively. The photodetectors’ photoresponsivity increases 15 to 200 times in a 300 ppm NO2 gas environment compared to air. Such mutual enhancement achieved through the clever combination of light and gas implies a novel approach to improve the performance of the black silicon detectors in both gas sensing and photoelectric detection.

Monitoring of carbon ion therapeutic beams with thin silicon sensors

Single ion counting in particle therapy may lead to new beam monitoring systems, enabling innovative delivery strategies that are faster and more sensitive than those currently used in clinics. Previous studies carried out by the University and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) of Turin have demonstrated the feasibility of using thin silicon detectors to count single protons in clinical beams. The aim of this work is to report the performance of a strip-segmented 60-μm thick silicon PIN sensor used for single carbon ion discrimination. All measurements were performed using the CNAO synchrotron at different beam energies covering the clinical energy range (115–399 MeV/u). Signals from the sensor strips were read using a custom amplifier board and sampled with a 5 GS/s digitizer. The carbon ion signals were analyzed in terms of amplitude, duration, and deposited charge at different sensor bias voltages.

Virtual segmentation of a small contact HPGe detector: inference of hit positions of single-site events via pulse shape analysis

Exploring hit positions of recorded events can help to understand and suppress backgrounds in rare event searches. We propose a pulse shape analysis method to discriminate single-site events (SSEs) in the inner and outer layer of a small contact P-type germanium detector (HPGe). SSEs in the inner and outer layer have different pulse shape features, of which the rise time of the (TQ)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$(T_{Q})$$\\end{document} and current pulse (TI)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$(T_{I})$$\\end{document} are selected for discrimination. A 500 Bq Thorium-228 (Th-228) source is used to determine the boundaries between the two layers. The double escape peak events from 2614.5 keV γ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\gamma $$\\end{document}-ray are selected as typical SSEs, their numbers in the two layers are used to calculate the volumes and shapes of those layers. Considering the statistical and systematic uncertainties, the inner layer volume is evaluated to be 47.2% ± 0.26%(stat.) ± 0.18%(sys.) ± 0.22%(sys.) of the total sensitive volume. Selecting the inner layer as the analysis volume can reduce the external background in the signal region of Ge-76 neutrinoless double beta (0νββ)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ u \\beta \\beta )$$\\end{document} decay. We use the Th-228 data to validate the inner layer model and evaluate the background suppression power in the 0νββ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ u \\beta \\beta $$\\end{document} signal region (Qββ=2039\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$(Q_{\\beta \\beta }=2039$$\\end{document} keV). The virtual segmentation further reduces the background from the external Th-228 source by about 10%. The virtual segmentation could be used to efficiently suppress surface background like electrons from Ar-42 decay in 0νββ\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ u \\beta \\beta $$\\end{document} experiments using germanium detectors immersed in liquid argon.

Full-aperture extended-depth oblique plane microscopy through dynamic remote focusing.

The reprojection setup typical of oblique plane microscopy (OPM) limits the effective aperture of the imaging system, and therefore its efficiency and resolution. Large aperture system is only possible through the use of custom specialized optics. A full-aperture OPM made with off the shelf components would both improve the performance of the method and encourage its widespread adoption. To prove the feasibility of an OPM without a conventional reprojection setup, retaining the full aperture of the primary objective employed. A deformable lens based remote focusing setup synchronized with the rolling shutter of a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor detector is used instead of a traditional reprojection system. The system was tested on microbeads, prepared slides, and zebrafish embryos. Resolution and pixel throughput were superior to conventional OPM with cropped apertures, and comparable with OPM implementations with custom made optical components. An easily reproducible approach to OPM imaging is presented, eliminating the conventional reprojection setup and exploiting the full aperture of the employed objective.

Assessment of the axial resolution of a compact gamma camera with coded aperture collimator

PurposeHandheld gamma cameras with coded aperture collimators are under investigation for intraoperative imaging in nuclear medicine. Coded apertures are a promising collimation technique for applications such as lymph node localization due to their high sensitivity and the possibility of 3D imaging. We evaluated the axial resolution and computational performance of two reconstruction methods.MethodsAn experimental gamma camera was set up consisting of the pixelated semiconductor detector Timepix3 and MURA mask of rank 31 with round holes of 0.08 mm in diameter in a 0.11 mm thick Tungsten sheet. A set of measurements was taken where a point-like gamma source was placed centrally at 21 different positions within the range of 12–100 mm. For each source position, the detector image was reconstructed in 0.5 mm steps around the true source position, resulting in an image stack. The axial resolution was assessed by the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) profile along the z-axis of the stack. Two reconstruction methods were compared: MURA Decoding and a 3D maximum likelihood expectation maximization algorithm (3D-MLEM).ResultsWhile taking 4400 times longer in computation, 3D-MLEM yielded a smaller axial FWHM and a higher CNR. The axial resolution degraded from 5.3 mm and 1.8 mm at 12 mm to 42.2 mm and 13.5 mm at 100 mm for MURA Decoding and 3D-MLEM respectively.ConclusionOur results show that the coded aperture enables the depth estimation of single point-like sources in the near field. Here, 3D-MLEM offered a better axial resolution but was computationally much slower than MURA Decoding, whose reconstruction time is compatible with real-time imaging.

Radioisotope production using lasers: From basic science to applications

The discovery of chirped pulse amplification has led to great improvements in laser technology, enabling energetic laser beams to be compressed to pulse durations of tens of femtoseconds and focused to a few micrometers. Protons with energies of tens of MeV can be accelerated using, for instance, target normal sheath acceleration and focused on secondary targets. Under such conditions, nuclear reactions can occur, with the production of radioisotopes suitable for medical application. The use of high-repetition lasers to produce such isotopes is competitive with conventional methods mostly based on accelerators. In this paper, we study the production of 67Cu, 63Zn, 18F, and 11C, which are currently used in positron emission tomography and other applications. At the same time, we study the reactions 10B(p,α)7Be and 70Zn(p,4n)67Ga to put further constraints on the proton distributions at different angles, as well as the reaction 11B(p,α)8Be relevant for energy production. The experiment was performed at the 1 PW laser facility at Vega III in Salamanca, Spain. Angular distributions of radioisotopes in the forward (with respect to the laser direction) and backward directions were measured using a high purity germanium detector. Our results are in reasonable agreement with numerical estimates obtained following the approach of Kimura and Bonasera [Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 637, 164–170 (2011)].