ABSTRACT: The number of biological/biomedical applications that require AMS to achieve their goals is increasing, and so is the need for a better understanding of the physical, morphological, and structural traits of high quality of AMS targets. The metrics of quality included color, hardness/texture, and appearance (photo and SEM), along with FT-IR, Raman, and powder X-ray diffraction spectra that correlate positively with reliable and intense ion currents and accuracy, precision, and sensitivity of fraction modern ( F m). Our previous method produced AMS targets of gray-colored iron-carbon materials (ICM) 20% of the time and of graphite-coated iron (GCI) 80% of the time. The ICM was hard, its FT-IR spectra lacked the sp (2) bond, its Raman spectra had no detectable G' band at 2700 cm (-1), and it had more iron carbide (Fe 3C) crystal than nanocrystalline graphite or graphitizable carbon (g-C). ICM produced low and variable ion current whereas the opposite was true for the graphitic GCI. Our optimized method produced AMS targets of graphite-coated iron powder (GCIP) 100% of the time. The GCIP shared some of the same properties as GCI in that both were black in color, both produced robust ion current consistently, their FT-IR spectra had the sp (2) bond, their Raman spectra had matching D, G, G', D +G, and D '' bands, and their XRD spectra showed matching crystal size. GCIP was a powder that was easy to tamp into AMS target holders that also facilitated high throughput. We concluded that AMS targets of GCIP were a mix of graphitizable carbon and Fe 3C crystal, because none of their spectra, FT-IR, Raman, or XRD, matched exactly those of the graphite standard. Nevertheless, AMS targets of GCIP consistently produced the strong, reliable, and reproducible ion currents for high-throughput AMS analysis (270 targets per skilled analyst/day) along with accurate and precise F m values.
