AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition
    Applied Surface Science Wednesday Sessions
       Session AS+BI+MC-WeM

Paper AS+BI+MC-WeM2
Expanded Approaches for Single Cell Analysis by SIMS

Wednesday, November 12, 2014, 8:20 am, Room 316

Session: Chemical Imaging in 2D and 3D
Presenter: Christopher Szakal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Correspondent: Click to Email
Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) has been increasingly utilized for single cell imaging owing to its unique combination of spatial resolution and chemical differentiation by mass. Depending on the instrument type, subcellular lateral resolution between 10’s and 100’s of nanometers can be obtained, sometimes with both elemental and organic information obtained simultaneously, and sometimes with highly precise isotopic ratio measurements being attainable. However, imaging at the limits of the technique requires sufficient counts per pixel, which can be limited by analyte concentrations, competitive ionization pathways, and cumulative cluster ion beam damage accumulation. This work focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of combining focused ion beam (FIB) milling of single cells with subsequent ToF-SIMS imaging, as well as using large geometry (LG)-SIMS for high mass resolution analysis of single cell components that would otherwise not be easily detectable in other instrumental configurations. Such developments expand the research areas that are possible for single cell SIMS analyses, including cell differentiation without relying on multivariate analyses and targeted cell uptake studies.