Using a Gas Ion Source for Radiocarbon AMS and GC-AMS

Abstract

This paper reports on the performance of a new method of sample injection using the High Voltage Engineering Europa (HVEE) SO-110 ion source jointly developed between HVEE and Oxford. In order to use this source, we have developed a new gas handling system which works on the direct injection of carbon dioxide mixed into a continuous flow of helium. Preliminary work has also been carried out on online gas chromatography-accelerator mass spectrometry (GC-AMS). In this application, a GC is directly coupled to the AMS system using a GC-IRMS combustion interface and Nafion(TM) drier. We show here results for the measurement of natural abundance in separated compounds with good peak separation and precisions of about 10%. This type of system should be ideal for source apportionment studies, biomedical, and other similar work where high precision is not required but where sample sizes are very low.