ETH/Ion Beam Physics Laboratory, Zürich
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) provides instrumentation originally developed by nuclear physicists more than 30 years ago to measure long lived cosmogenic radionuclides such as 10Be, 14C, 26Al, 36Cl, 41Ca, 129I, U, Pu and Pa at natural levels. In the past ten years impressive progress in the measurement technique has been made and with the appearance of compact low energy radiocarbon AMS systems, a new category of AMS instruments has been introduced. This has resulted in a boom of new AMS facilities with more than 20 new installations over the last five years. But low energy AMS is not limited to radiocarbon only and there is a great potential for 10Be, 26Al, 129I and actinides measurements at compact AMS systems. The latest developments towards the low energy limit of AMS resulted in two new types of systems, the NEC Single Stage AMS (SSAMS) and ETH mini carbon dating system (MICADAS) operating with terminal voltages of about 200 kV only. In addition, systems like the HVEE 1 MV Tandetron or the compact ETH 600 kV system are capable to extent the range of applications at compact systems beyond radiocarbon. These systems will have enormous impact, not only on the use of AMS in biomedical research and on radiocarbon dating but also for research applications with 10Be, 26Al, 129I and actinides.
