Caesium sputter ion source compatible with commercial SIMS instruments

A simple design for a caesium sputter cluster ion source compatible with commercially available secondary ion mass spectrometers is reported. This source has been tested with the Cameca IMS 4f instrument using the cluster Sin and Cun ions, and will shortly be retrofitted to the floating low energy ion gun (FLIG) of the type used on the Cameca 4500/4550 quadruple instruments. Our experiments with surface characterization and depth profiling conducted to date demonstrate improvements of analytical capabilities of the SIMS instrument due to the non-additive enhancement of secondary ion emission and shorter ion ranges of polyatomic projectiles compared to atomic ions with the same impact energy.