Optimized Detection Limits in FIB-SIMS by Using Reactive Gas Flooding and High Performance Mass Spectrometers

FIB-based instruments play an ever more important role in materials science and also in life science. While such FIB-based instrumentation is an ideal tool for high resolution imaging (2D and 3D imaging) and nanofabrication (nanomaching, nanodeposition, specimen preparation), its analysis capability is currently limited. By contrast, Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) is an extremely powerful technique for analyzing surfaces owing in particular to its excellent sensitivity, high dynamic range, very high mass resolution and ability to differentiate between isotopes. Adding SIMS capability to FIB instruments offers not just the prospect of obtaining SIMS information limited only by the size of the probe-sample interaction (~10nm) but also enables a direct correlation of such SIMS images with high resolution secondary electron images of the same zone taken at the same time.