A new compact radiocarbon AMS spectrometer has been built and tested. The system requires an overall footprint of 2.3 x 3 m2 only and uses a commercial HV power supply of 200 kV maximum voltage to generate the electric field for particle acceleration. The acceleration unit is a vacuum insulated differentially pumped HV platform hosting the stripper assembly. The stripper design is based on the principle to destroy interfering molecules with the charge state 1+ in multiple collisions using gas of sufficient density. At the low energy end an ion source is installed incorporating several new features in its design. A 90° magnetic spectrometer which is equipped with a fast beam switching system is used for mass separation at low energies. At the high energy end a combination of a magnetic and an electrostatic analyzer is used to perform a non-energy dispersive mass analysis. Finally, the particles are stopped in a gas ionization optimized for particle detection at low energies. The system is now fully operational and has been used for a series of tests as well as for radiocarbon dating measurements. We will present details of the system design and overview the present performance of the instrument.
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See more of The 10th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (September 5-10, 2005)