Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NPI)

• A next generation Multi-Isotope Low-Energy Accelerator (MILEA) system enables determination of long-lived radionuclides ¹⁰Be, ¹⁴C, ²⁶Al, ⁴¹Ca, ¹²⁹I, ²³⁶U, ²³⁹Pu and other actinides and fission products with limits of detection several orders of magnitude lower than conventional radiometric and mass spectrometric techniques.
• Determination of ¹⁴C for radiocarbon dating of archaeological artefacts with a limit of detection (LOD) 5–6 orders of magnitude lower than radiometric methods. This will enable dating of very small samples (only 250 µg of carbon in solid samples needed or even a lower amount in the case of measurement of gaseous ¹⁴CO₂). The range of radiocarbon dating is approximately 50 000 years.
• Dating with ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al would extend the range of dating of artefacts, such as stone tools and stratigraphic samples, up to several hundreds of thousand of years (up to the Palaeolithic). Unlike radiocarbon dating, the use of ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al for dating in archaeology will be new and highly innovative.