Imaging surface spectroscopy for two- and three-dimensional characterization of materials

Abstract

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) exhibits a unique potential for the measurement of two-and three-dimensional distributions of trace elements in advanced materials, which is demonstrated on relevant technological problems. One example is the characterization of high purity iron. With this material segregation experiments have been performed and the initial and final distribution of the trace elements have been measured. Another example is the investigation of the corrosion behaviour of high purity chromium. Samples oxidized with ¹⁶O and ¹⁸O have been measured to explain the growing and adhesion of the oxide layer. All imaging techniques generate a vast quantitiy of data. In order to extract the important information the assistance of chemometric tools is essential. Detection of chemical phases by classification using neural networks or de-noising of scanning-SIMS images by wavelet-filtering demonstrates the increase of the performance of analytical imaging techniques.