Abstract:
Secondary ion mass spectrometry(SIMS) is more sensitive than other surface microregion analysis instrumentals. Because the neutral atom, liquid metal ion and laser primary beam, the post ionization, the time of flight analyzer with retarding electrode, the ion delay detection and the computarizing image technique have been used in SIMS, it has the following feature parameters: the energy and spot of primary beam is up to MeV and down to less μm, the mass resolution is up to 15 000, the lateral and depth resolution come to less 0.5 μm and 5 nm, the detection limit is down to ng/g, and the other fearure is to giving two or three dimensional image. SIMS can be used to detect the half quatitative element concentration and isotope abundance in the mineral, nucleomatter, meteorite and cosmomatter, to identify the high volatile and thermal instable biomacromolecule, to analyze the lateral and depth profile to giving ion image information. The applicable region of SIMS has been extended to measuring of the single particulate matter, cluster, polymer, microelectronic crystal piece, isotope label compound in the biological cell, microchip, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) genotyping, ect,. The quasimolecular ion peak of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) contained twenty hundred base pairs was observed by MALDI TOFMS. The main achievements are summarized and several key applications are illustrated in great detail.