Preparation and measurement of the half-life of 101Tc

101Tc is a very important nuclide as fuel burn up monitor, and its half-life value has been measured many times, however, they were so different from each other. In this work, 101Tc liquid samples were prepared by irradiating analytical pure (NH4)6Mo7O24 · 4H2O solution in Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) of China. A rapid procedure which takes only 5 min was developed to separate 101Tc samples. The final samples were analyzed by γ-ray spectrum using high purity Germanium (HPGe) multi-channel analysis system. The results showed that there were no peaks of other nuclides except 101Tc. The half-life of 101Tc was accurately measured with HPGe γ-detector following 306.8 keV γ-ray for about 140 min, and three methods R-value method, iterative method and translation method were adopted to process the data. Finally, a more precise and accurate value 14.02 ± 0.01 min was given and compared with former measured data. (author)