Surface Analysis by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS): Principles and Applications from Swiss laboratories

Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) extracts chemical, elemental, or isotopic information about a localized area of solid target by performing mass spectrometry on secondary ions sputtered from its surface the impact beam charged particles. This primary sputters ionized atoms and small molecules (as well as many neutral particles) upper few nanometers sample surface. The physical basis SIMS has been applied to large range applications utilizing instruments optimized with different types analyzer, either dynamic double focusing spectrometer static Time Flight (TOF) analyzer. Here, we present short review principles major three located in Switzerland.