The first compact accelerator mass spectrometer in China has been successfully developed, and the related technical indexes have reached the international leading level.

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen ZKSen for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, November 7 (Xinhua) after nearly four years of efforts, the accelerator mass spectrometry research team of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Chinese Academy of Atomic Energy has successfully developed the first compact tandem accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) in China, marking important progress in the development of high-end nuclear analysis equipment in China.

According to reports, the instrument has made innovative research achievements in the compactness of the accelerator, breaking through a series of core difficulties and key technologies, such as high voltage feeding, gas input, high voltage insulation, gap acceleration, air resistance distribution and so on. it not only reduces its volume to 1/3 of the traditional similar equipment, but also has a more powerful function. it can be used for efficient and sensitive analysis of more than ten kinds of nuclides, such as carbon-14, aluminum-26, iodine-129, uranium-236, etc. The relevant technical indicators have reached the international leading level.

In addition, the team also optimized the physical and beam optics of the accelerator mass spectrometry system for multi-nuclide analysis, which improved its practicability and economy.

Officials say this achievement will promote the localization of China's high-end accelerator mass spectrometers and is expected to be widely used in environmental, physical, geological, biological, pharmaceutical, celestial and other fields.

CTOnews.com Science Popularization: accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is a modern nuclear analysis technology integrated with accelerator, nuclear physics, mass spectrometry and other disciplines. Its most important feature is that it can achieve highly sensitive determination of extremely trace nuclides and has unparalleled sensitivity, so it can carry out work that can not be carried out by other techniques. These extremely trace nuclides play the function of "fingerprint" nuclides and play a unique role in many fields. Thus greatly promoted the development of related disciplines.

AMS has a wide range of applications. If divided from space, it can be divided into three parts. It can study the evolution of celestial bodies, cosmic rays, solar activity, etc.; in the middle, it can study the environment and climate change, global carbon cycle, earthquake and glacier history, carbon peak, cultural relic archaeology, and so on. Ocean circulation, marine resources, underground mineral deposits, groundwater age and so on can be studied. In terms of discipline, the application fields of AMS involve geology, archaeology, environment, astrophysics, biomedicine, nuclear physics and so on.