Laser photolysis device and method for removing isobaric elements
Technical Field
The invention belongs to the technical field of radionuclide sensitivity measurement, and particularly relates to a laser photolysis device and method for removing isobaric elements.
Background
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is the most sensitive analytical technique for measuring long-lived radionuclides, and the most important factor limiting their sensitivity is isobaric interference of the nuclides being measured. In order to eliminate isobaric interferences, the conventional method is to increase the ion energy and realize the elimination of isobaric by adopting an isobaric identification technology of a detector. However, this method not only requires a high accelerator voltage, but also is effective only for light species with a mass number less than 40, but also has a very limited effectiveness for larger species, and cannot achieve highly sensitive analysis of the species, and thus the application of accelerator mass spectrometry is very limited.
Disclosure of Invention
In order to overcome the defects in the prior art, the invention aims to provide a laser photolysis device and a laser photolysis method for removing isobaric elements, which are not limited by the mass number of ions and can realize the high-sensitivity measurement of the mass spectrum of an accelerator of multi-nuclides.
In order to achieve the above purposes, the invention adopts a technical scheme that:
a laser photolysis device for removing isobaric elements comprises an ion source for leading out anion beams, a laser generator for generating laser beams, a radio frequency quadrupole rod and a helium cooling reaction tank, wherein the helium cooling reaction tank is positioned in the middle area of the radio frequency quadrupole rod;
the energy of the laser beam generated by the laser generator is higher than the electron affinity of the interfering isobaric element and is lower than the electron affinity of the detected nuclide;
an incident slit and an exit slit are respectively arranged at two ends of the radio frequency quadrupole rod, and a cathode ion beam and a laser beam are emitted into the radio frequency quadrupole rod from the incident slit and are emitted from the exit slit;
a deceleration electrode is arranged at the front end of the entrance slit, an acceleration electrode is arranged at the rear end of the exit slit, and the cathode ion beam is decelerated through the deceleration electrode and accelerated through the acceleration electrode;
the radio frequency quadrupole rod, the deceleration electrode and the acceleration electrode are all arranged in a pipeline, a helium gas inlet is formed in the position, corresponding to the middle of the radio frequency quadrupole rod, of the pipeline, and trace helium gas enters the helium cooling reaction tank through the helium gas inlet.
Further, the laser photolysis apparatus for eliminating isobaric elements as described above, said apparatus being placed in a vacuum chamber.
Further, in the laser photolysis apparatus for removing isobaric elements as described above, the wavelength of the laser beam is 532nm, and the corresponding energy is 2.33 eV.
Further, according to the laser photolysis device for removing isobaric elements, the pipeline is further provided with a plurality of molecular pumps, and helium in the pipeline is pumped out through the molecular pumps, so that the helium reaches dynamic balance in the radio frequency quadrupole rod area.
Still further, in the laser photolysis apparatus for removing isobaric elements as described above, the plurality of molecular pumps are respectively located at the position on the pipe corresponding to the middle of the rf quadrupole, near the deceleration electrode, and near the acceleration electrode.
Based on the laser photolysis device for removing isobaric elements, the invention provides a laser photolysis method for removing isobaric elements, which comprises the following steps:
s1, placing the laser photolysis device in a vacuum chamber;
s2, feeding trace helium into a helium cooling reaction tank from a helium inlet in the middle of the pipeline, and pumping out the helium by using three molecular pumps to enable the helium to reach dynamic balance in a radio frequency quadrupole rod area;
s3, applying radio frequency voltage to the radio frequency quadrupole rods;
s4, feeding the cathode ion beam led out by the ion source into the radio frequency quadrupole rod;
s5, reducing the energy of the ion beam to be below 50eV by utilizing a deceleration electrode;
s6, irradiating laser beams with the wavelength of 532nm into the helium cooling reaction tank from an incident slit;
s7, in the helium cooling reaction tank, laser and anions are subjected to photolysis, so that the same quantity of heterotopic anions are changed into neutral particles to be eliminated, and meanwhile, the measured nuclide is not influenced by the laser;
and S8, re-accelerating the energy of the negative ion beam coming out of the helium cooling reaction tank to the original energy level of the ion beam after passing through an accelerating electrode.
The laser photolysis device and the method for removing isobaric elements provided by the invention have the following remarkable technical effects:
1. the same amount of heterotopic element interference can be eliminated by only adopting a laser technology without a large accelerator;
2. the method has universality, can be used for both heavy nuclides and light nuclides, and avoids the problem that a gas detector only has effect on the light nuclides but has no effect on the heavy nuclides when identifying the same amount of allotropic elements;
3. the method is combined with a small accelerator mass spectrometer device, can realize the total nuclide determination of the mass spectrum of the small accelerator, provides a feasible technical route for the miniaturization of the accelerator mass spectrometer, and lays a foundation for the multi-field application based on the accelerator mass spectrometer.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a laser photolysis apparatus for removing isobaric elements according to an embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a flow chart of a laser photolysis process for the elimination of isobaric elements provided in an embodiment of the present invention;
in FIG. 1, 1-radio frequency quadrupole; 2-helium cooling the reaction tank; 3-an entrance slit; 4-an exit slit; 5-a retardation electrode; 6-an accelerating electrode; 7-a molecular pump; 8-pipeline.
Detailed Description
The invention is further described with reference to specific embodiments and drawings attached to the description.
The core idea of the laser photolysis method for eliminating isobaric elements provided by the invention is as follows:
in accelerator mass spectrometry, anions are generally extracted from an ion source, and how much of the anion is formed is related to the electron affinity of an atomic or molecular ion. The invention adopts a laser beam with certain energy to act on the anion beams, and the energy of the laser beam (the wavelength is 532nm corresponding to 2.33eV) is just higher than the electron affinity (such as the electron affinity of the interfering isobaric element with the same quantity (such as36S-Has an electron affinity of 2.08eV) and is less than the electron affinity of the species being detected (e.g., electron affinity of 2.08eV)36Cl-The electron affinity of 3.61eV), in which case the laser can photolyze the electrons of the isobaric element to make them become neutral ions, while the species to be detected is not affected, thus realizing the elimination of the background of the isobaric element.
The formula of anion photolysis is
Wherein N is
0The number of initial anions, phi the photon intensity of the laser, sigma the photolytic section of the anion, and t the action time of the photon and the anion. The photon flux of the laser is typically about 10
21cm
-2S
-1And the photolytic cross-section of the anion is about 10
-17cm
2Therefore, the background voltage of the isobaric element can be reduced by 8-10 orders of magnitude after the reaction time t is hundreds of microseconds. However, in accelerator mass spectrometry, the energy of the anion is typically about 30keV, at which the anion flight velocity is too fast, so that the laser and anion interaction time is short (nanoseconds). Therefore, to increase the reaction time, the present invention reduces the particle energy to below 50eV by decelerating the particles and further decelerating the particles using a helium cooling cell, and simultaneously to increase the reaction timeAnd (4) restraining to improve the transmission efficiency of the particles, and placing a helium cooling pool in the radio frequency quadrupole.
Based on the thought, the invention provides a laser photolysis device for removing isobaric elements, which has a specific structure shown in figure 1, and comprises an ion source for leading out anion beams, a laser generator for generating laser beams and a radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, wherein a helium cooling reaction tank 2 is arranged in the middle area of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1; an incident slit 3 and an exit slit 4 are respectively arranged at two ends of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, and a cathode ion beam and a laser beam are emitted into the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1 from the incident slit 3 and are emitted from the exit slit 4; a deceleration electrode 5 is arranged at the front end of the entrance slit 2, and an acceleration electrode 6 is arranged at the rear end of the exit slit 4; the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, the deceleration electrode 5 and the acceleration electrode 6 are all arranged in the pipeline 8, a helium gas inlet is arranged on the pipeline 8 corresponding to the middle of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, and trace helium gas enters the helium gas cooling reaction tank 2 through the helium gas inlet.
The entire apparatus was placed in a vacuum chamber. When radio frequency voltage is applied to the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, cathode ion beams led out from an ion source are decelerated along the central axis direction of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1 through a deceleration electrode 5 and then are emitted into the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1 from the middle of an incidence slit 3, and are further decelerated in a helium cooling reaction tank 2, so that the energy of particles is reduced to be below 50 eV; meanwhile, laser beams generated by a laser generator are emitted into the helium cooling reaction cell 2 from the middle of the incidence slit 3; in the helium cooling reaction tank 2, a laser beam and anions undergo photolysis reaction, and because the laser energy is higher than the electron binding energy of the isobaric element, electrons of the isobaric element anions are stripped from the anions and become neutral particles to be removed, and the nuclide to be detected is still the anions because the electron binding energy is higher than the laser energy and is not influenced by the laser, so that the removal of the background of the isobaric element is realized; the cathode ion beam emitted from the exit slit 4 is further accelerated to an energy of about several tens keV by the accelerating electrode 6.
Preferably, in the present embodiment, the wavelength of the laser beam is 532 nm.
Preferably, in the present embodiment, a plurality of molecular pumps 7 are further disposed on the pipeline 8, and the helium gas in the pipeline 8 is pumped out by the molecular pumps 7, so that the helium gas reaches a dynamic equilibrium in the area of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1. In the embodiment, helium gas outlets are respectively arranged on the pipeline 8 corresponding to the middle of the radio frequency quadrupole rod 1, near the deceleration electrode 5 and near the acceleration electrode 6, and correspondingly, three molecular pumps 7 are arranged.
Based on the above device, the present invention provides a laser photolysis method for removing isobaric elements, the flow chart of the method is shown in fig. 2, and the method comprises the following steps:
s1, placing the laser photolysis device in a vacuum chamber;
s2, feeding trace helium into a helium cooling reaction tank from a helium inlet in the middle of the pipeline, and pumping out the helium by using three molecular pumps to enable the helium to reach dynamic balance in a radio frequency quadrupole rod area;
s3, applying radio frequency voltage to the radio frequency quadrupole rods;
s4, sending the cathode ion beam led out by the ion source into a radio frequency quadrupole rod;
s5, reducing the energy of the cathode ion beam to be below 50eV by utilizing the deceleration electrode;
s6, irradiating laser beams with the wavelength of 532nm into the helium cooling reaction tank from an incident slit;
s7, enabling laser to act on anions in a helium cooling reaction tank to change the isomorphic allotropic element anions into neutral particles to be eliminated;
s8, the energy of the negative ion beam coming out from the helium cooling reaction tank is accelerated to the original energy level of about dozens of keV after passing through the accelerating electrode.
Thus, the isobaric ions are effectively eliminated through the processes.
The laser photolysis device and the method for eliminating the isobaric elements can eliminate the interference of the isobaric elements only by adopting a laser technology; the method has universality, can be used for both heavy nuclides and light nuclides, and avoids the problem that a gas detector only has effect on the light nuclides but has no effect on the heavy nuclides when identifying the same amount of allotropic elements; the method is combined with a small accelerator mass spectrometer device, can realize the total nuclide determination of the mass spectrum of the small accelerator, provides a feasible technical route for the miniaturization of the accelerator mass spectrometer, and lays a foundation for the multi-field application based on the accelerator mass spectrometer.
The above-described embodiments are merely illustrative of the present invention, which may be embodied in other specific forms or in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof. The described embodiments are, therefore, to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive. The scope of the invention should be indicated by the appended claims, and any changes that are equivalent to the intent and scope of the claims should be construed to be included therein.