With nuclear medicine receiving greater attention due to its unique characteristics in both diagnostics and therapeutics during recent decades, finding a highly controllable fabrication method becomes more urgent. The radioisotope 124 I (T 1/2 =4.18d; E β+ =2.13MeV; I β+ =25%) has gained plentiful interests in the medical usages such as functioning imaging of cell proliferation in brain tumors using [ 124 I]iododeoxyuridine (IUdR), imaging of immunoreactions in tumors using 124 I-labelled

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... onal antibodies, the in-vivo imaging of 124 I-labelled tyrosine derivatives, and the classical imaging of thyroid diseases with 124 I, among others. Furthermore, it is because that thermal response of target during the fabrication process may affect the production of 124 I to some extent and needs thorough investigations. Hence, the compact cyclotron located in the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research was employed in this study to generate 20MeV protons to irradiate TeO 2 solid targets in which the radioisotopes 124 I were produced through the 125 Te(p, 2n) 124 I nuclear reaction. In addition, the widely-used ANSYS computer code was adopted to theoretically analyze thermal responses of TeO 2 to irradiation cases with variations in ion beam current and its thermal conductivity. The results indicate that TeO 2 temperature is strongly dependent on its thermal conductivity and ion beam current. In particular, TeO 2 surface temperature is extremely sensitive to the air-gap size between TeO 2 and target holder. Thus the target holder is suggested to be re-designed in order to prevent TeO 2 from melting and a high efficiency production of radioisotopes 124 I for nuclear medical diagnostics can be successfully achieved.