Power of TOF-SIMS Tandem MS Imaging: Industrial Problem Solving to Investigating Nature

Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) is powerful analytical technique that has been heavily utilized to analyze surface chemistries due to its very shallow sampling depth (10-20 Å), high chemical sensitivity, and ability to provide elemental and molecular information. Additionally, TOF-SIMS can produce chemical images with high spatial resolution (< 70 nm). Over the past 40 years TOF-SIMS has evolved immensely from primarily being used in universities for fundamental studies to an invaluable tool to solve industrial problems. However, historically, TOF-SIMS has been hampered by the ability to confidently identify high mass secondary ions ( >140 m/z) with high mass accuracy (< 10 ppm) [1]. This problem has only become worse with use of cluster ion beams (e.g. Au3+, C60+, Bi3+, and Ar gas cluster) which significantly improves secondary ion yields for higher mass fragments. To overcome this problem, Physical Electronics has developed