Abstract
At ANSTO, we use the Bosch reaction to convert sample CO2 to graphite for production of our radiocarbon AMS targets. Key to the efficient graphitisation of ultra-small samples are the type of iron catalyst used and the effective trapping of water vapour during the reaction. Here we report a simple liquid nitrogen cooling system that enables us to rapidly adjust the temperature of the cold finger in our laser-heated microfurnace. This has led to an improvement in the graphitisation of microgram-sized carbon samples. This simple system uses modest amounts of liquid nitrogen (typically <200mL/h during graphitisation) and is compact and reliable. We have used it to produce over 120 AMS targets containing between 5 and 20μg of carbon, with conversion efficiencies for 5μg targets ranging from 80% to 100%. In addition, this cooling system has been adapted for use with our conventional graphitisation reactors and has also improved their performance.
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