Experimental study of α-particle induced reactions on natural erbium for the production of Auger-emitters 167Tm, 165Er and 169Yb

Highlights: • Activation cross-sections of alpha-particle induced reactions were measured on natural erbium target. • Stacked-foil technique, activation method and gamma-spectroscopy were used. • Cross section for ytterbium (^167,169Yb and thulium (¹⁶⁵Tm, ¹⁶⁶Tm, ^167cumTm, ¹⁶⁸Tm) were determined. • Production routs of ¹⁶⁹Yb, ¹⁶⁷Tm and ¹⁶⁵Er were discussed. The cross sections for nuclear reactions ^natEr(α,x) were measured in the energy range 60 → 10 MeV using the stacked-foil technique. The experiments were carried out in a wider energy range in comparison with previous works. The results are consistent with other studies and modeling using TENDL-2019. The ¹⁶⁷Tm yield was 5.4 MBq/μAh in the range 60 → 30 MeV, and the main long-lived impurity is ¹⁶⁸Tm (0.78% in terms of activity). The ¹⁶⁵Tm yield is 4.6 MBq/μAh (60 → 40 MeV). ¹⁶⁹Yb is formed with a yield of 1.0 MBq/μAh in the energy range 60 → 20 MeV.