Caesium sputter ion source compatible with commercial SIMS instruments

A simple design for a caesium sputter cluster ion source compatible with commercially available secondary ion mass spectrometers is reported. This source has been tested with the Cameca IMS 4f instrument using the cluster Si n − and Cu n − ions, and will shortly be retrofitted to the floating low energy ion gun (FLIG) of the type used on the Cameca 4500/4550 quadruple instruments. Our experiments with surface characterization and depth profiling conducted to date demonstrate improvements of analytical capabilities of the SIMS instrument due to the non-additive enhancement of secondary ion emission and shorter ion ranges of polyatomic projectiles compared to atomic ions with the same impact energy.