Recent progress on the new MeV SIMS setup at ETH Zurich

ETH Zurich

An MeV SIMS set-up with a capillary microbeam is being installed at the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics at ETH Zurich. By using a microcapillary collimator, primary beam spots of a few microns in diameter can be formed almost independent of mass and energy of the projectiles. The high energy beam transport is exclusively achieved by electrostatic ion optical elements. This allows to use high energy heavy ions as well as molecular ions (e.g. C60) in low charge states.  The SIMS chamber is equipped with a piezo raster stage for imaging. Five samples at a time can be introduced and stored in the UHV chamber via a vacuum load lock. Secondary ions are detected by a linear Time-of-Flight (ToF) spectrometer with a 0.5 m flight path and a microchannel plate detector. ToF start signals can be obtained from incident MeV particles or by beam pulsing. For thin samples, a gas ionization chamber allows to detect transmitted ions to perform STIM measurements. Additional imaging and analysis of the sample will be possible with a secondary electron device and a silicon drift detector which can be mounted to produce PIXE maps. Details on the set-up and first results will be presented.