Bj. Hughey et al., DESIGN OF A COMPACT 1-MV AMS SYSTEM FOR BIOMEDICAL-RESEARCH, Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms, 123(1-4), 1997, pp. 153-158
The widespread use of accelerator mass spectrometry in biomedical rese
arch will require the development of cost-effective, laboratory-sized
AMS systems which can be used in conjunction with conventional gas and
fluid phase separation techniques. This paper describes the design of
a low energy AMS system for the detection of C-14 and H-3 in labeled
biological samples. The system utilizes a compact 1 MV tandem accelera
tor which incorporates a foil stripper. The low energy analyzer, accel
erating column, and high energy analyzer are designed for efficient tr
ansport and analysis of both carbon and hydrogen beams using the minim
um number of optical elements. ?The resulting instrument is very compa
ct: the entire AMS system including the injector, ion source and high
energy analyzer is just under 3 m wide and is approximately 1.3 m high
and 1 m deep. The relatively small size of this system will allow its
installation in most biomedical laboratory facilities. The system is
predicted to provide a statistical precision of better than 2% for the
quantitation of attomole samples.