| a. Cesium Sputter Ion Sources | » Next to b. |
| One of two cesium sputter ion sources. In AMS, it's
critical to create negative ions in order to discriminate against
the most abundant natural element of mass 14, nitrogen. Nitrogen does
not form negative ions and if not for this fact, radiocarbon AMS wouldn't
be possible. To generate a negative ion beam, the compacted solid
carbon samples are bombarded with Cs ions. » View cesium sputtering in the ion source (QuickTime animation) |
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