| AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Applied Surface Science | Thursday Sessions |
| Session AS-ThA |
| Session: | Advances for Complicated Sample Preparation Strategies and Complex Systems |
| Presenter: | Jay Tarolli, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
| Authors: | J. Tarolli, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory B. Naes, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory B. Garcia, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory A. Fischer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory D. Willingham, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
While secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is a technique that offers a substantial amount of chemical information of an analysis area, it comes with inherent limitations that often reduce the signal-to-noise ratio of desired species as well as the achievable spatial resolution. A growing approach to overcoming these limitations is to acquire complementary information from other analytical imaging techniques, such as optical and electron microscopy. Image fusion is a post-acquisition data analysis technique that has been recently applied to new and more diverse SIMS experiments in order to improve the perceived spatial resolution, intensity, and contrast of chemical images. The basis of image fusion is to combine information from two or more input images in order to create an output visualization that better represents the analysis area than any of the input images could alone. Thus, multimodal imaging analyses that incorporate SIMS and a second higher resolution analytical technique, followed by post-acquisition image fusion, are able to provide a representation of chemical information with greater detail at a smaller scale.
In this work, a new source of higher resolution data, X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), is explored to improve the visual quality of SIMS images, combining elemental information with chemical information. First, a workflow was developed to register and fuse EDS images of an Al-Si-Cu alloy at various microscope magnifications with dynamic SIMS images to better visualize the localization of Cu and Si domains. A new implementation of image fusion was then developed to improve the screening process of U-bearing particles. In this case, elemental information provided by EDS is used to improve the spatial resolution of uranium isotopic distributions in order to differentiate particles which may potentially be enriched. These particles can then be screened individually to verify the isotopic distributions. In this case, image fusion has been applied not simply in a proof-of-concept scenario, rather an implementation that improves an existing process in order to obtain SIMS results with higher accuracy and precision.