Experimental studies on excitation functions of the proton-induced activation reactions on yttrium

Proton-induced activation cross-sections were measured for the 89Y(p,x)89,88,86Zr, 89Y(p,x)88,87,87m,86Y, 89Y(p,x)85,83,82Sr and 89Y(p,x)84,83Rb reactions by a stacked foil technique in the energy range 15–80 MeV which was covered by two separate measurements for 15–50 and 32–80 MeV energy range with 50 and 80 MeV incident protons. The differences between the results of two irradiations were found within 6% in the overlapping energy regions. The production yields for the long-lived products like 88Zr, and 88Y are significantly larger than that of natMo+p, natNb+p and natZr+p processes. The productions of the medical isotopes, 85Sr and 83Sr are also effective by Y+p process using an 80 MeV beam. Thick target integral yields were also deduced using the measured cross-sections. The 87Y, 88Y, 88Zr and 89Zr radionuclides have suitable yields and decay characteristics important for thin-layer activation (TLA) analysis.