The CEDAD, Centro di Datazione e Diagnostica, of the University of Lecce, Italy is a multi-disciplinary accelerator-based facility involved in studies in different research fields from Cultural heritage, Environmental and Earth sciences to material sciences. The facility is structured in three divisions: the AMS sample processing laboratories, the accelerator laboratory and an optical division where advanced optical techniques are developed in the field of the diagnostic of objects of artistic or archaeological relevance. The performances of the AMS sample processing laboratories have been improved in the last three years with the installation of new samples processing lines achieving the current throughput of 50 samples prepared per week (with ca 1000 “unknown” samples prepared and measured in 2004). In particular sample of different origin are routinely prepared, converted to carbon dioxide both by combustion and by acid hydrolysis and then reduced to graphite by using hydrogen as reducing agent and iron powder as catalyst. A sample processing background of 47 ka and 50 ka, in the radiocarbon timescale, are routinely achieved in the preparation of combustion and carbonate blanks, respectively. The accelerator laboratory is based on a 3 MV HVEE Tandetron accelerator currently equipped with four experimental beam lines for 14C AMS, high energy ion implantation and in vacuum and in air Ion Beam Analysis (IBA). A nuclear microprobe beam line able to perform IBA characterisations with a lateral resolution of 0.5-1 ìm is also under installation. The sequential injection AMS spectrometer have shown in the first two years of operation the possibility to achieve routine precision of 0.3-0.4 % and 0.05-0.1 % in the 14C/12C and 13C/12C ratio measurements and a machine background to 70 ka. Recent results in the fields of Archeology, Enviromental sciences, Paleoclimatology, Geology and Forensics will be also presented.
See more of Poster Session I
See more of The 10th International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (September 5-10, 2005)