Theoretical approach to explore the production routes of astatine radionuclides

To fulfill the recent thrust of astatine radionuclides in the field of nuclear medicine, various production routes have been explored in the present work. The possible production routes of 209-211At comprise both light- and heavy-ion-induced reactions at the bombarding energy range starting from threshold to a maximum of 100 MeV. Excitation functions of those radionuclides, produced through various production routes, have been calculated by using nuclear reaction model codes TALYS, ALICE91, and PACE-II and are compared with the available measured data. Contributions of various reaction mechanisms, such as direct, pre-equilibrium, and equilibrium reactions, to the total reaction cross section have been studied using the codes. Results show that the equilibrium reaction dominates in all cases over other reaction mechanisms