Significant enhancement of negative secondary ion yields by cluster ion bombardment combined with cesium flooding

Auteurs

P. Philipp, T. B. Angerer, S. Sämfors, P. Blenkinsopp, J. S. Fletcher, and T. Wirtz

Référence

Analytical Chemistry, vol. 87, no. 19, pp. 10025–10032, 2015

Description

In secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), the beneficial effect of cesium implantation or flooding on the enhancement of negative secondary ion yields has been investigated in detail for various semiconductor and metal samples. All results have been obtained for monatomic ion bombardment. Recent progress in SIMS is based to a large extent on the development and use of cluster primary ions. In this work we show that the enhancement of negative secondary ions induced by the combination of ion bombardment with simultaneous cesium flooding is not only valid for monatomic ion bombardment, but also for cluster primary ions. Experiments carried out using C₆₀⁺ and Ar₄₀₀₀⁺ bombardment on silicon show that yields of negative secondary silicon ions can be optimised in the same way as by Ga⁺ and Cs⁺ bombardment. Both for monatomic and cluster ion bombardment, the optimisation does not depend on the primary ion species. Hence, it can be assumed that the silicon results are also valid for other cluster primary ions and that results obtained for monatomic ion bombardment on other semiconductor and metal samples are also valid for cluster ion bombardment. In SIMS, cluster primary ions are also largely used for the analysis of organic matter. For polycarbonate, our results show that Ar₄₀₀₀⁺ bombardment combined with cesium flooding enhances secondary ion signals by a factor 6. This can be attributed to the removal of charging effects and / or reduced fragmentation, but no major influence on ionisation processes can be observed. The use of cesium flooding for the imaging of cells was also investigated and a significant enhancement of secondary ion yields was observed. Hence, cesium flooding has also a vast potential for SIMS analyses with cluster ion bombardment.

Lien

DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.5b02635