Next to radiocarbon dating there is a great potential for measuring 14C in very small sample amounts (1-100 μg) for environmental and biomedical applications. Here is a need for easy manageable AMS instruments for rapid and reliable measurements saving time and manpower. The novel tabletop miniature radiocarbon dating system (MICADAS) was specially designed for these requirements [1] and equipped with a completely new, self constructed cesium sputter ion source for operating the system with graphite targets as well as gaseous carbon dioxide targets.
We now present a gas handling system for treating small samples from combustion to radiocarbon measurement. Thereby the time consuming graphitization step can be omitted making sample preparation much easier, time efficient and user friendly. A concept of the fully automated gas feeding system is presented as well as first results of testing the ionization potential of the new ion source. The final performance aims at a direct coupling of chromatographic separation with radiocarbon detection using the MICADAS.
[1] H.-A. Synal et al., Nucl. Instr. and Meth. Phys. Res. B223-224 (2004) 339.
See more of Poster Session I
See more of The 10th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (September 5-10, 2005)