Recent progress in ruthenium chemistry for establishing a ¹⁰³Ru/^103mRh generator for Auger therapy

The most challenging task for establishing a ¹⁰³Ru/^103mRh generator for Auger therapy, is to reach an effective separation between the two radionuclides because of the highly unpredictable, very complicated and poorly understood chemistry. In HCl, this work was able to evidence the formation of Ru colloids. It has been evidenced that the starting material of Ru, time and temperature have a strong influence on Ru speciation, but no polynuclear species of ruthenium–chloride was observed. This work has showed that it is fully possible to control the speciation of ruthenium, especially Ru(IV), within a mononuclear species; that is a huge step forward compared to literature. (author)