Low Charge-State AMS for Biological Research

Vogel, John S. ; Ognibene, Theodore ; Roberts, Mark ; Brown, Thomas ; Clifford, Andrew ; Espinosa, Daniel ; Lin, Yumei

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

关键词: Research Programs;    Nutrition;    Performance;    Spectrometers;    Implementation;   

DOI  :  10.2172/15013582
RP-ID  :  UCRL-ID-142803
RP-ID  :  W-7405-ENG-48
RP-ID  :  15013582

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

University collaborations and internal research programs that trace isotopically labeled compounds in natural biological systems have grown significantly in the past few years. New research in molecular nutrition, protein sequencing, immunoassays, and toxicology now require hundreds to thousands of sample analyses per project. The goal of this effort was to strengthen this Laboratory and University health related research by the expansion of AMS access. This was achieved by our design and implementation of an AMS spectrometer that analyzes isotopic ions at lower energies in a more compact spectrometer without sacrificing precision or throughput. The decrease in ion energies is accompanied by a significant reduction in size and cost of the spectrometer. Our successful reduction in spectrometer cost, operation, and space will make this technology more appealing to research institutions, including industrial research centers. While others have also developed smaller spectrometers, these are limited in precision and throughput by the much lower intensities of ion beams that can be transmitted through them without differential loss of isotope species. The primary challenge in this project was mating the LLNL-designed high intensity negative ion source (Roberts, et al. 1994; Southon & Roberts, 2000) to available accelerator components and then showing that the precision and throughput would remain high enough to serve the research that needs large numbers of AMS analyses. The project also required reduction in operating complexity so that scientists and students would not require technical specialists to make their measurements. This report describes the experiments done to assure the needed spectrometer performance.