Definition
SIMS, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, is a surface chemical analysis technique for solid materials. As its name indicates, a specimen is bombarded with a primary ion beam and the secondary ions are collected using a detector – a spectrometer. The secondary ions provide information on the elemental, molecular, and isotopic composition of a material’s surface. SIMS is one of the most sensitive techniques for surface analysis.
Scientific Fundamentals
In 1910, Joseph John Thomson, a British physicist, observed the emission of secondary ions followed by the bombardment of a metal surface (Thomson 1910). It took almost 30 years after his observation to enable the qualitative and quantitative analysis of secondary ions. In 1949, Herzog and Vieböck built the first prototype of SIMS and analyzed secondary ions from metals and oxides (Herzog and Vieböck 1949). It was in the 1960s that two types of practical SIMS were developed: one by Castaing and Slodzian in 1960 and another by...
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Joo, S., Liang, H. (2013). Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS). In: Wang, Q.J., Chung, YW. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tribology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-92897-5_1218
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-92897-5_1218
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