ION MICROTOMOGRAPHY USING ION TIME-OF-FLIGHT

We have developed and are in the process of testing an ion time-of-fli ght (TOF) detector system for use in our ion microtomography measureme nts. Using TOF, ion energy is determined by measurement of the ion's f light time over a certain path length. For ion microtomography, the pr inciple advantage of TOF analysis is that ion count rates of several h undred thousand counts per second can be achieved as compared to a lim it of about ten thousand ions per second when using a solid-state sili con surface barrier detector and associated electronics. This greater than 10-fold increase in count rate correspondingly shortens sample an alysis time or increases the amount of data that can be collected on a given sample.