REASSESSMENT OF UNCERTAINTY EXPANSION BY LINEAR ADDITION OF LONG-TERM COMPONENTS FROM TOP-DOWN INFORMATION

Abstract

ABSTRACTSince radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (14C AMS) is considered a high-precision technique, reassessment of the measurement uncertainty has been a topic of interest. Scientists from analytical and metrological fields have developed the top-down and bottom-up measurement of uncertainty approaches. The 14C quoted error should approximate the uncertainty of long-term repetitions of the top-down approach in order to be realistic. The novelty of this paper is that the uncertainty of both approaches were approximated to each other. Furthermore, we apportioned the graphitization, instrumentation, and bias components in order to additively expand the quoted error. Our results are comparable to error multipliers and to long-term repeatability studies reported by other laboratories. Our laboratory was established in late 2012 with N2 as stripper gas and 7 years later, we changed to helium stripper. Thus, we were able to compare both gases, and demonstrate that helium is a better stripper gas. In absolute F14C units, the ranges of graphitization+bias combined uncertainties were (0.7 to 4.1) × 10–3 for N2 and (0.7–3.0) × 10–3 for He depending on the standard 14C content. The error multiplier for He defined as the expanded uncertainty over quoted error, in average, was 1.7; while without the bias, the multiplier was 1.3.