Samir Maji

Production of no-carrier-added 123I via heavy-ion activation of natural antimony oxide

Activation of natural Sb2O3 with 48 MeV 7Li3+ beam results in the formation of no-carrier-added 123I in the matrix along with the radionuclides 123,125Xe and 122Sb. The 123I yield amounts to about 400 kBq/μAh and the radionuclidic impurity of 124I to ∼1.2% of 123I. Attempts to separate no-carrier-added iodine from bulk antimony target involved liquid-liquid extraction with TOA and HDEHP as well as precipitation of Sb2S3 with thioacetamide. The precipitation technique was found to be the most effective for quantitative separation of 123I from the bulk antimony oxide target.

Separation of samarium and neodymium: a prerequisite for getting signals from nuclear synthesis

(146)Sm (T(1/2) = 10(8) y) is a long-lived radionuclide which has been produced in significant amounts during burning in a supernova (SN). Detection of this SN produced long-lived radionuclide on Earth may be helpful for getting information on nuclear synthesis at the time of our solar systems formation. Only accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) can determine such minute traces of (146)Sm still expected in the Earths crust. However, the villain of (146)Sm measurement through AMS is its naturally occurring stable isobar (146)Nd which is a million times more abundant than the trace amount of (146)Sm. Therefore an efficient method for the separation of samarium and neodymium is required to measure (146)Sm through AMS. A simple liquid-liquid extraction (LLX) based method for separation of samarium and neodymium has been developed using radiometric simulation. Di-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (HDEHP) has been used as the organic reagent. A very high separation factor ( approximately 10(6)) can be achieved when a solution containing samarium and neodymium is reduced by hydroxylamine hydrochloride followed by extraction with 0.1% HDEHP diluted in cyclohexane from 0.025 M HCl solution.

Separation of 137mBa from its parent 137Cs from an equilibrium mixture using amide incorporated Amberlite IRC-50

A chelating resin was synthesized by incorporating amide group into Amberlite IRC-50, a weakly acidic polymer. The new resin was employed in the separation of 137mBa from its parent 137Cs from an equilibrium mixture. The adsorbed daughter was recovered using 0.01 M EDTA at pH 10.