Developing the measurement of 60Fe with AMS at CIAE

The long lived radioactive nuclide ⁶⁰Fe is interesting in many research fields such as astrophysics and nuclear physics. Taking the advantage of the high energy of HI-13 tandem AMS system and the high performance of a Q3D magnetic spectrometry at CIAE, the measurement method of ⁶⁰Fe is being developed. As first step, ⁵⁸Fe and ⁵⁸Ni are used for simulating ⁶⁰Fe and ⁶⁰Ni for optimizing the measurement conditions and checking the ability of isobar suppression. The results shown that an overall suppression factor of more than 10¹¹ can be obtained by using the ΔE-Q3D technique in combination with a four-anodes gas ionization chamber. Based on the findings a detection sensitivity of ⁶⁰Fe/Fe ∼ 10⁻¹⁵ can be anticipated.