Excitation functions have been measured for alpha-particle induced reactions on natural nickel leading to the production of 62 Zn , 61 Cu , 56,57 Ni and 56,58 Co radioisotopes up to 50 MeV by the activation method and gamma-ray spectrometry. Most of these radioisotopes are produced by one or two alpha-particle emissions and a few nucleon emissions. The excitation functions were compared with semi-classical models codes, like ALICE/90, which includes a shell corrected level density formulation and the COMPLET, which takes into account angular momentum removal effects. In the case of multi-nucleon emission channels, ALICE/90 gives fairly good agreement. The COMPLET code on the other hand, explains the α-particle emission channels in a more convincing manner.
