Towards a table-top accelerator mass spectrometry device - status and perspectives

So far, accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) facilities were operated with several MV terminal voltage by specialists at nuclear (or particles) physics institutes. We have therefore made efforts to miniaturize tandem accelerators to minimum possible accelerator voltages at no (or little) loss of sensitivity. In two steps, first a 0.5 MV device TANDY was developed that proved to fulfil all requirements for most AMS applications. This facility is now commercially available. A further step showed that even 200 kV acceleration voltage is sufficient to still run a tandem facility (MICADAS) that can be used for 14C and 239Pu counting and probably also some other isotopes such as 129I and 10Be. MICADAS is a device of only 2.3 m x 3 m size and is currently the world-smallest AMS device. Its operation is designed for non-specialists in the field of accelerator physics. This opens up new perspectives for applications at institutes where such measurements are needed for in-house research. In the talk, some applications are presented where such mini-AMS facilities were used in micro-14C determinations down to the 10 μg total carbon level to study emission sources (biogenic/anthropogenic) of carbonaceous particles in the atmosphere, for nuclear dating of glacier ice archives, or for ultra-trace determinations of 239Pu in environmental samples down to the 107 atoms/kg level in ice archives. Finally ongoing research and development is presented towards continuous gas injection as a future option in AMS. (author)