Development of mass spectrometry by high energy focused heavy ion beam: MeV SIMS with 8 MeV Cl7+ beam

Time of flight spectra are currently acquired with a single-hit time-to-digital converter. Pulsed ion beam produces a shower of secondary ions that are ejected from positively biased target and accelerated towards MCP. We start our time measurement simultaneously with the start of the beam pulse. Signal of the first ion hitting MCP is used to stop the time measurement. Standard pulses proportional to the time of flight are produced with time to analog converter (TAC) and fed into analog-to-digital converter to obtain a time histogram. To enable efficient detection of desorbed fragments with higher molecular masses, which are of particular interest, we recently implemented a state-of art Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based multi-hit TOF acquisition. To test the system we used focused 8 MeV 35Cl7+ ion beam with pulse length of 180 ns. Mass resolution of measured SIMS spectra, dominantly determined by the duration of the beam pulse, is in good agreement with resolution estimated from pulse length. With improved high-voltage switching ability that will enable beam pulses with duration of 50 ns, a mass resolution of better than 500 is anticipated.