Recycling of 52cr Electroplated Targets for 52gMn Production

Mn is a promising radionuclide for positron emission tomography (PET). Enriched Cr targets are required to minimize formation of Mn radioisotopic impurities during production with proton beams. The need for radioisotopically pure Mn, accessibility and cost of Cr, sustainability of the radiochemical process, and potential for iterative purification of target materials motivate this development of recyclable, electroplated Cr metal targets and radiochemical isolation and labeling with resulting >99.89% radionuclidically pure Mn. The run-to-run replating efficiency is 60 ± 20%, and unplated chromium from this method is recovered with 94% efficiency as CrCl hexahydrate. The decay-corrected molar activity of chemically isolated Mn for common chelating ligands was 376 MBq/μmol.