A new approach to express ToF SIMS depth profiling

We propose a new approach to express SIMS depth profiling on a TOF.SIMS‐5 time‐of‐flight mass spectrometer. The approach is based on the instrument capability to independently perform raster scans of sputter and probe ion beams. The probed area can be much smaller than the diameter of a sputter ion beam, like in the AES depth profiling method. This circumstance alleviates limitations on the sputter beam–raster size relation, which are critical in other types of SIMS, and enables analysis on a curved‐bottomed sputter crater. By considerably reducing the raster size, it is possible to increase the depth profiling speed by an order of magnitude without radically degrading the depth resolution. A technique is proposed for successive improvement of depth resolution through profile recovery with account for the developing curvature of the sputtered crater bottom in the probed area. Experimental study of the crater bottom form resulted in implementing a method to include contribution of the instrumental artifacts in a nonstationary depth resolution function within the Hofmann's mixing–roughness–information depth model. The real‐structure experiment has shown that the analysis technique combining reduction of a raster size with a successive nonstationary recovery ensures high speed of profiling at ~100 µm/h while maintaining the depth resolution of about 30 nm at a 5 µm depth. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.