| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Applied Surface Science Division | Tuesday Sessions |
| Session AS+TF-TuA |
| Session: | Problem Solving Using Surface Analysis in the Industrial Laboratory |
| Presenter: | Scott Bryan, Physical Electronics |
| Authors: | G.L. Fisher, Physical Electronics D.M. Carr, Physical Electronics T. Miyayama, ULVAC-PHI, Japan S. Iida, ULVAC-PHI, Japan S.R. Bryan, Physical Electronics |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
One of the most common requests in an industrial analytical lab is to distinguish between “good” and “bad” samples of supposedly the same composition. For failure analysis labs, the goal is often to determine the source of contamination or defects in a production process with poor yield. Identifying contamination left behind from different cleaning procedures or after extended use is also a common request. In all these circumstances, one does not know ahead of time what chemical compounds are present. TOF-SIMS is an ideal technique for these applications because it has high sensitivity, high specificity, and parallel detection of all masses. One complication is that real-world samples usually have a complex mixture of compounds on the surface, making the TOF-SIMS spectrum difficult to interpret. Further, the use of a wide variety of different primary ion beams (e.g. Ga+, In+, Au+, Bi+, C60+, and Arn+) has complicated the use of TOF-SIMS spectral databases for compound identification due to large changes in relative peak intensities from one beam to another.
A MS/MS capability was recently integrated into a TOF-SIMS instrument to make compound identification easier [1,2]. It allows unambiguous identification of both organic and inorganic peaks above m/z 200, where the mass accuracy is insufficient to identify the composition of a peak by its exact mass. A MS/MS spectrum from a single precursor mass is much easier to match using a spectral database compared to using the original complex TOF-SIMS spectrum. In addition, the MS/MS spectrum of a given precursor ion is independent of the primary ion used to generated it.
Several case studies will be given where MS/MS was needed to identify compounds from an analysis of industrial samples. Two modes of MS/MS will be compared and contrasted. One is based on collision induced dissociation (CID) with inert gas and the other is based on post source decay (PSD).
[1] G.L. Fisher, J.S. Hammond, P.E. Larson, S.R. Bryan, R.M.A. Heeren, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 34(3), 2016, 03H126-1.
[2] G.L. Fisher, A.L. Bruinen, N. Ogrinc Potočnik, J.S. Hammond, S.R. Bryan, P.E. Larson, R.M.A. Heeren, Anal. Chem., 88, 2016, 6433-6440.