Feasibility study of laser-driven neutron sources for pharmaceutical applications

We predict the production yield of a medical radioisotope Cu-67 using Zn-67(n, p)Cu-67 and Zn-68(n, pn)Cu-67 reactions with fast neutrons provided from laser-driven neutron sources. The neutrons were generated by the p+Be-9 and d+Be-9 reactions with high-energy ions accelerated by laser-plasma interaction. We evaluated the yield to be (3.3 +/- 0.5) x 10(5) atoms for Cu-67, corresponding to a radioactivity of 1.0 +/- 0.2 Bq, for a Zn foil sample with a single laser shot. Using a simulation with this result, we estimated Cu-67 production with a high-frequency laser. The result suggests that it is possible to generate Cu-67 with a radioactivity of 270 MBq using a future laser system with a frequency of 10 Hz and 10,000-s radiation in a hospital.