The new 6 MV AMS-facility DREAMS at Dresden

A new 6 MV electrostatic tandem accelerator has been put into operation at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The system is equipped for accelerator mass spectrometry and opens a new research field at HZDR and the Helmholtz Association. It will be also used for ion beam analysis as well as for material modification via high-energy ion implantation. The research activity at the DREsden Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility (DREAMS) based on a 6 MV Tandetron is primarily dedicated to the long-lived radioisotopes of Be-10, Al-26, Cl-36, Ca-41, and I-129. DREAMS background levels have been found to be at 4.5 x 10(-16) for Be-10/Be-9, 8 x 10(-16) for Al-26/Al-27, 3 x 10(-15) for Cl-36/Cl-35 and 8 x 10(-15) for Ca-41/Ca-40, respectively. The observed background of 2 x 10(-13) for I-129/I-127 originates from intrinsic I-129 from AgI produced from commercial KI. The introduction of quality assurance approaches for AMS, such as the use of traceable calibration materials and taking part in interlaboratory comparisons, guarantees high accuracy data for future DREAMS users. During first experiments an energy calibration of the accelerator has been carried out using the nuclear reaction H-1(N-15,gamma alpha)C-12 yielding an energy correction factor of 1.019. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.