Efficient extraction of ⁶⁸Ge from irradiated Ga-Ni alloy via a novel organic-solvent-free separation procedure

In this work, a gallium-nickel alloy target with a weight percentage ratio of 7:3 was successfully prepared on Cu substrate in a chloride system at room temperature. A novel organic-solvent-free separation procedure based on two columns for extracting Ge-68 from irradiated Ga-Ni alloy target with high radionuclidic purity (99.99 %) was developed. By this separation procedure, the recovery of Ge-68 is 95 +/- 5 % and the yield of Ge-68 via the nuclear reaction Ga-nat(p,xn)Ge-68 was measured to be 0.27 +/- 0.02 MBq/mu A h.