Technical Study on Centrifugal Separation of ⁷²Ge Isotope with Germanium Tetrafluoride as Processing Gas

In this paper, germanium tetrafluoride (GeF₄) is used as the separation medium to carry out a technical study on the separation of ⁷²Ge isotopes by gas centrifugation. First, through theoretical calculations, explore the possibility of producing ⁷²Ge through short cascade enrichment. The calculation results show that using the MARC model, ⁷²Ge with an abundance of more than 55% can be obtained after two separations. On the existing cascades in the laboratory, a 21-step cascade structure is adopted. The separation performance of the cascade is optimized by adjusting the internal working conditions and external parameters of the cascade. After two separation experiments, a product with ⁷²Ge abundance higher than 60% was finally obtained.