Application of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry for Iron and Steel Material Analysis

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry with a focused ion beam system is a useful surface analysis to measure elemental mappings around 100 nm on a lateral resolution and trace element detections on a range of ppm in atomic concentration. With these advantages, TOF-SIMS has been frequently used for iron and steel material analysis. We have demonstrated some applications in this paper, that is the B distribution along the grain boundaries in the steel sample with a trace amount of B, the detection of tribofilm from the test piece surface after the sliding test, and so on.