ABSTRACT

Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) measurements on samples containing less than 0.1 mg of carbon have been performed via accelerator mass spectrometry and manual sample preparation techniques relying on vacuum glass lines. Since geological samples are often limited in size with respect to ¹⁴C dating, sample preparation techniques should be improved for small samples. In this study, the small-mass graphitization of international standard reference materials (∼0.1 mg and ∼0.05 mg of carbon) was evaluated as a technique for ¹⁴C dating using an elemental analyzer and third-generation automated graphitization equipment (EA-AGE3; IonPlus AG). This paper also presents the first data for small-sample graphitization for the IAEA standards by EA-AGE3. The preliminary results are encouraging, indicating that the pMC values (without background correction) for the small-mass international standard reference materials containing ∼0.1-0.05 mg carbon are close to their consensus values.