Distortion of Secondary Ion Extraction Due to Sample Surface Irregularities

Hitherto numerous publications concerning the analytical application of Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) have appeared. In contrast, a rather limited number of investigations dealing with the influence of instumental effects on quantitative analysis have been published till now. One of these is the interpretation of the results of the comparative SIMS study of selected glasses NEWBURY showed that the relative sensitivity factors for the same element obtained by 22 different laboratories vary over more than one order of magnitude. Under the assumption that well characterized standards had been distributed to all cooperating laboratories the main reasons for deviations of such an extent must be supposed in different primary ion (PI) beam parameters and instrumental conditions incomparable to each other. Solely standardized conditions for creation, extraction, analysis, and detection of the secondary ions (SI) and mathematical compensation of every discriminating effect will lead to data that can be handled successfully by quantitative models.