Andr E.

Lalonde Accelerator Mass

Spectrometry Laboratory
The Andr E. Lalonde Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory is
a accelerator mass spectrometry research facility at the University of
Ottawa in Canada. It is currently the only AMS facility in Canada. The
facility is named after former uOttawa Faculty of Science dean Andr E.
Lalonde, who died of cancer in 2012.
History
The facility was created by 2014, with funding from the Canada
Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund. It is located in
uOttawa's Advanced Research Complex (ARC). It replaced
the IsoTrace facility at the University of Toronto. It cost around 10 million
dollars.[1]
In 2017, the AEL AMS will host the 14th annual AMS conference.
Equipment
The facility has a custom-made 3 mega-volt tandem accelerator mass
spectrometer.[2] It also has a 200 sample ion source, a high resolution,
120 injection magnet, a 90 high energy analysis magnet (mass-energy
product 350 MeV-AMU), a 65, 1.7 m radius electric analyzer and a 2
channel gas ionization detector.[3] The AMS weighs around 44 tons and is
around 25 metres long.[1] The facility can be seen through a two-storey
window in the lobby of the ARC.[4]
The AMS accelerates the isoptopes to a very high speed with almost no
contamination, thus allowing for the detection of trace isotopes at very
low levels.
Personnel
The executive committee of the AEL AMS is composed of three uOttawa
professors: William Kieser, Ian Clark and Jack Cornett.