Production and decay properties of the 6Li + Sm nuclear reaction*

The production of rare earth elements through nuclear reactions for applications in medicine and technology is an active area of research. We conducted an experiment in which ionized 6Li beams were accelerated at the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute to energies up to 2000 keV and directed towards stacked targets of natural samarium foils and gold foils for 14 hours. The samarium target was then positioned in between high purity germanium detectors for 20.88 days which collected data in 10-minute shots. We developed a computational framework for high-throughput utilization of the Curie activation analysis code and used it to analyze 43 spectra corresponding to contiguous 10-minute shots. In this talk we will cover the excitation functions for the production of 151Tb, 152Tb, 155Tb, and 161Tb, as well as accurate half-life determinations of 151Tb and 152Tb.