Question

What is accelerator mass spectrometry? What type of information does this method provide?

Short answer

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a novel technology of mass spectrometry that differs from conventional mass spectrometers in that the lon is accelerated to a very high kinetic energy before being mass analysed.

Step-by-step solution

Step 1. Given information

Accelerator mass spectrometry is a kind of mass spectrometry in which ions are accelerated to extremely high kinetic energy before being analysed for mass. The ability of AMS to differentiate a rare isotope from an abundant surrounding mass is its unique strength among mass spectrometric approaches.

Step 2. accelerator mass spectrometry 

A mass spectrometer is a device that creates ions and then separates them by their mass-to-charge ratio. There are several different types of mass spectroscopy devices on the market right now.

The mass-to-charge ratio $\frac{m}{z}$is a unitless number generated by dividing an atomic or molecular ion's mass number by the charge existing on it.

The chemical ingredient that must be evaluated in an analytical method is known as an analyte.

Step 3. Information provided by this method

Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a novel technology of mass spectrometry that differs from conventional mass spectrometers in that the lon is accelerated to a very high kinetic energy before being mass analysed.

The analyte is removed from the sample as negative ions by bombarding it with a stream of cesium ions. After that, the analyte ions are accelerated through a beam tube and transformed to positive ions.

In the presence of high levels of a stable isotope, accelerator mass spectrometry permits the identification of unstable isotopes.

As a result, accelerator mass spectroscopy is defined as mass spectroscopy that employs a variant in isotope-ratio approach.