MICADAS: Routine and High-Precision Radiocarbon Dating

The prototype mini carbon dating system (MICADAS) at ETH Zurich has been in routine operation for almost 2 yr. Because of its simple and compact layout, setting up a radiocarbon measurement is fast and the system runs very reliably over days or even weeks without retuning. The stability of the instrument is responsible for the good performance in highest-precision measurements where results of single samples can be reproduced within less than 2 parts per thousand. The measurements are described and the performance of MICADAS is demonstrated on measured data.