Routine performance and biomedical/pharmaceutical applications of the HVE low-energy 14C AMS system

Abstract

The HVE 4102Bo-AMS dedicated to 14C analyses minimizes measurement background by using a charge state selector in the accelerator terminal. The measured blank 14C/12C level for solid samples was determined to be 5.6 × 10-16, corresponding to more than 60,000 radiocarbon years.Tests on ion source memory indicated a prompt (<10 sec) decrease from OxII 14C/12C ratio (1.58 × 10-12) to ∼1.2 × 10-15 for the next sample (>3 orders of magnitude) followed by an approx. 40 s decay time to the background level of 5 × 10-16. The AMS system demonstrated its capability of supporting biomedical/pharmaceutical applications using CO2 samples from blood plasma with 14C activities ranging from 1002 to 0.752 mBq/mL in a qualification test performed with an external partner.