Three dimensional ultra trace analysis of materials

We have developed a new imaging system for secondary ion mass spectrometry, including a new interface to control all functional units of the CAMECA IMS 3f instrument, especially the high voltage channel plate. Use of a 386 PC (HP Vectra RS-25) made a new 20-bit magnetic field control, a new counting board with higher dynamic range and a new sample position unit possible. A double channel plate enables us to detect single ions with a sensitive CCD camera.An Imaging Technology 151 image processor digitizes and accumulates camera data. During summation the image processor detects the brightest and darkest pixel in the channel plate picture, thus channel plate high voltage may be dynamically controlled according to the intensity of the secondary ion signal. This results in fully automatic measurement of unknown samples with large variations in the lateral and depth concentration of elements. A dynamic range for measurement of secondary ion intensities of 10⁸ can be achieved.Software written in C controls the image processor, the channel plate high voltage and all other parts of the instrument, and has a user friendly interactive interface. To visualise multidimensional data (three dimensional distribution of more than one element) a software package was written which allows to correlate elemental distributions.