Fast and easy reactor-based production of copper-64 with high molar activities using recoil chemistry

Abstract

Reactor-based production of medically relevant ⁶⁴Cu is only possible using recoil chemistry. We report highly soluble tert-butyl copper(II) phthalocyanine as the target material. This enables efficient ⁶⁴Cu recovery through liquid–liquid extraction after neutron capture. The automatable process allows reuse of the target material and achieves a molar activity of 950 MBq μmol⁻¹.