Design and Performance of a New Time-of-Flight Instrument for SIMS

Abstract

Sputtering of organic molecules results in the emission of parent-like secondary ions as (M±H)^±e.g., provided the molecules are in an appropriate chemical environment [1,2]. Yields in the 10% range can be obtained from amino acids,e.g. These yields and typical damage cross sections of some 10⁻¹⁴ cm² result in a probability of some percent for a surface molecule to be transformed into a parent-like secondary ion during sputtering. A considerable decrease of this probability is expected for larger molecules.