A novel ion imager for secondary ion mass spectrometry

An area detector for a secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) ion microscope and its performance are described. The operational principle is based on detecting the change in potential of a floating photodiode caused by the ion-induced secondary-electron emission and the incoming ion itself. The experiments demonstrated that 10¹-10⁵ aluminum ions per pixel can be detected with good linear response. Moreover, relative ion sensitivities from hydrogen to lead were constant within a factor of 2. The performance of this area detector provides the potential for detection of kiloelectronvolt ion images with current ion microscopy