Effective lutetium/ytterbium separation for no-carrier added lutetium-177 production

In order to realize no-carrier added lutetium-177 (¹⁷⁷Lu) production through ¹⁷⁶Yb(n, γ) ¹⁷⁷Yb→ ¹⁷⁷Lu process, effective separation of ¹⁷⁷Lu from Yb target including lanthanide resin (LNR) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation have been developed in this research. Different lanthanide resins including LN, LN2 and self-synthesized M18II are adopted. Optimal separation condition such as column scale, choice of elution solution, temperature and Lu/Yb loading amount have been obtained. Using the self-synthesized resin M18II, Lu recovery/Yb residue rate of 99%/1% can be realized by elution with single concentration of nitric acid, which simplifies the device and process design and completely meets the requirement in the following no-carrier added ¹⁷⁷Lu production. Meanwhile, HPLC Lu/Yb separation using single column of ION or C18 have been evaluated, showing that HPLC with ION single column can better satisfy no-carrier added ¹⁷⁷Lu production when loading 0.1 mg-1 mg Lu/Yb. (author)