Production of intense mass separated $^{11}$ C beams for PET-aided hadron therapy

A novel production system based on the Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) method is being developed to produce intense mass separated $^{11}$C beams for PET-aided hadron therapy. In this work, we present a systematic study of the target that was developed for optimized $^{11}$C beam production. A solid boron nitride target (BN) with approximately 21% open porosity was manufactured by spark plasma sintering to provide maximized in-target production yield with enhanced isotope release properties. Operational limitations with respect to high temperatures and oxidizing atmospheres were studied, revealing that the BN target can withstand temperatures up to 1500 °C and can be operated with a controlled O$_{2}$ leak, providing O$_{2}$ potentials up to −300 kJ/mol, measured at 1000 °C.