Design and performance of an automated chemical extraction bench for the preparation of (10)~Be and (26)~Al targets to be analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometry

摘要

The growing number of studies based on data provided by the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) technique from increasingly diverse matrices implies that developing very effective and reproducible sample processing techniques is crucial to meet the demand generated.After being dissolved, the isolation of the cosmogenic nuclide to be measured and its chemical purification imply complex processes throughout successive stages The presented automatic system was designed to perform the final steps of the Be-10 and Al-26 chemical extraction protocol from natural matrices (sediments, pure mineral phases, ...), previously purified, decontaminated and dissolved in the case of in situ-produced cosmogenic nuclides, or leached or dissolved in the case of meteoric cosmogenic nuclides. Driven by Labview software, the developed automatic system, in addition to freeing the operator from tedious tasks, allows reproducibly processing simultaneously up to eight samples of different volumes in roughly 40 min. This article presents the design of the automated extraction bench and its performance based on the recovery efficiency of the stable element and the reproducibility of the measurements of the cosmogenic nuclide concentrations by AMS.