Modeling Transport of Secondary Ion Fragments into a Mass Spectrometer

The Surrey Ion Beam Centre was awarded the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant for “Promoting Cross Disciplinary Research: Engineering and Physical Sciences and Social Sciences” allowing continued research into the characteristics of desorption of secondary ions by the impact of fast primary ions in the ambient pressure at the sub-micron scale. To carry out this research a new beamline has been constructed consisting of a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer combined with the current 2MV Tandem accelerator. This research has already returned many significant results such as the first simultaneous SIMS, PIXE and RBS measurement preformed on an organic sample in vacuum. However, further optimization and validation of the new beamline is still being worked on. This work focuses on the optimization of the end station geometry to allow for high sensitivity ambient pressure measurements. It is concluded that a common geometry can be adopted for a wide variety of smooth samples to ensure optimum sensitivity provided a hard edge of the sample can be found to place the mass spectrometer capillary near.