Capabilities of the New SUERC 5MV AMS Facility for 14C Dating

Abstract

A new National Electrostatic Corporation (NEC) 5MV accelerator mass spectrometer became operational at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) in July 2002. It has 2 Cs sputter negative ion sources: a 134-sample source (S1) for the routine measurement of all species, and a hybrid source (S2) with 40 spaces for radiocarbon measurements with either graphite or CO2 samples. A number of performance tests on graphite samples have been carried out on both sources. A precision of better than 0.3% is feasible for modern samples on a routine basis. The 14C background of the machine and the graphite preparation process blank are 0.04 +/0.01 and 0.16 +/0.05 pMC, respectively, indicating that 14C dating back to approximately 50 kyr BP is possible. The normalized 14C values for a series of reference materials agree well with the IAEA, TIRI, and FIRI consensus values. Routine measurement of 14C has been underway since May 2003. Preliminary results of performance tests on the CO2 gas ion source are also reported.