Fast and accurate sequential injection AMS with gated Faraday cup current measurement.

Abstract

Sequential injection or bouncing has a number of properties which can lead to a reduction of the analysis accuracy if no appropriate measures are taken. A special injection system has been developed in order to eliminate these shortcomings. The influence of source glitches or instabilities on the measured isotopic ratio is substantially reduced by a high cycling frequency. A fast beam-blanking unit guarantees the needed accuracy of the injection periods. Background currents are avoided by synchronizing the current measurement for the stable isotopes with their injection periods. To achieve the required speed and precision of the gated measurement, new instrumentation was developed. The elimination of background contributions allows an efficiency for radiocarbon counting as high as 95% at a cycling frequency of 100 Hz.