SIMS Quantification Presented at SIMS 23 Conference

The annual International Conference on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS 23) is a conference that provides a forum for colleagues from academic, industrial, and national laboratories throughout the world to exchange results and new ideas on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and related techniques. The conference covers advancements in scientific knowledge from fundamentals to applications.

SIMS 23

For the 2022 Conference, held September 18-22, 2022, Eurofins EAG’s own Scientist Emeritus, Dr. Charles Magee, was invited to be the Keynote Industrial Speaker in the Quantification session held on September 20, 2022. His presentation was entitled “SIMS Quantification: Do You Remember When a Factor of Two Was Good Enough?”

SIMS Quantification

Figure 1: The state of SIMS quantification 50 years ago

A preview of his presentation:

Well, do you remember when a factor of two was good enough? Probably not. You would have to have been around SIMS in the early 1970s. This presentation will give many references back to the early days when a local thermal equilibrium (LTE) model was used to obtain the first results that were accurate to within a factor of two…but only 60% of the time. And it only worked for bulk silicate matrixes!  People were not even using SIMS on semiconductors in those days. Several early references showing profiles of ion implants in Si will be referenced, but it was not until 1980 that the first paper was published that explicitly showed how to use ion implants as SIMS standards.  People were using ion implants as standards before 1980, but only in limited cases, and with no formal published equations specifying how to use them. 

But the samples for which ion implants were used as standards were for dilute concentrations in a single matrix that had a uniform matrix composition with depth. The rest of the presentation will show how we at Eurofins EAG Laboratories tackled the problem of quantification of both major and minor elements in non-uniform, multi-element samples with abrupt or continuously graded composition changes using Point-by-point CORected-SIMS (PCOR-SIMS). These include SiGe, AlGaAs, PLAD B in poly-gates, and N in ultra-thin nitrided gate oxides.

Note: A post-presentation paper will be shared once completed.

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