Comparison of Oxygen and Indium Primary Ion Beams for SIMS-Depth Profiling

Liquid metal ion sources (LMIS) have recently received increased attention as a possible alternative to conventional primary ion sources in scanning SIMS. The main hope in the introduction of LMIS primary ion guns lies in the implementation of a true submicron scanning ion microprobe with an expected spatial resolution limit below 100 nm [1], [2]. While good progress has been made towards this particular goal [3],[2], very little has been reported C23 on the use of LMIS guns in depth profiling. Here, we want to report on a comparison of depth profiling capabilities using oxygen and In primary beams from a duoplasmatron and a LMIS respectively.