Low-energy 14C and multi-element HVE AMS systems

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Two sub-MV accelerator mass spectrometers based on vacuum-insulated accelerators were designed, built, and tested by High Voltage Engineering Europa B.V. The first one is dedicated to 14C measurements. Both low- and high-energy mass analysis is done with permanent magnets. Unique to the 14C AMS system is that the accelerator terminal is equipped with a charge state selector suppressing ions of unwanted charge states, thereby reducing the system background for the 14C/12C ratio to the low 10−15 level. The 14C/12C precision is measured to be 0.16%. The second AMS system is a multi-element for 10Be, 14C, 26Al, and 129I measurements. The analysis of actinides is supported as well. It is equipped with two analyzing magnets in the high-energy spectrometer. The measured machine background for carbon is 7 × 10−16, for beryllium 5 × 10−15, for aluminum < 5 × 10−15 and for iodine 4 × 10−14.