page_title: Accelerator mass spectrometry
hierarchical_section_title: Accelerator mass spectrometry
caption_attribution_description: English: Accelerator mass spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory "The 1 MV accelerator mass spectrometer was (see photo) developed partially under the Resource funding. 14C and tritium analyses of biomedical samples submitted by Resource users are conducted using this 1 MV system. The AMS spectrometer consists of a cesium sputter source, low-energy injection beam line, the high voltage collision cell (accelerator), a high-energy mass spectrometer and a particle detector for energy measurements (proceeding clockwise from lower left in the photograph)."
context_page_description: Accelerator mass spectrometry is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a rare isotope from an abundant neighboring mass. The method suppresses molecular isobars completely and in many cases can separate atomic isobars also. This makes possible the detection of naturally occurring, long-lived radio-isotopes such as ¹⁰Be, ³⁶Cl, ²⁶Al and ¹⁴C. Their typical isotopic abundance ranges from 10⁻¹² to 10⁻¹⁸. AMS can outperform the competing technique of decay counting for all isotopes where the half-life is long enough.
context_section_description: Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a rare isotope from an abundant neighboring mass ("abundance sensitivity", e.g. ¹⁴C from ¹²C). The method suppresses molecular isobars completely and in many cases can separate atomic isobars (e.g. ¹⁴N from ¹⁴C) also. This makes possible the detection of naturally occurring, long-lived radio-isotopes such as ¹⁰Be, ³⁶Cl, ²⁶Al and ¹⁴C. Their typical isotopic abundance ranges from 10⁻¹² to 10⁻¹⁸. AMS can outperform the competing technique of decay counting for all isotopes where the half-life is long enough.
caption: Accelerator mass spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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