Transmission secondary ion mass spectrometry using 5 MeV C ions

Nakajima, Kaoru*; Nagano, Kengo*; Suzuki, Motofumi*; Narumi, Kazumasa; Saito, Yuichi; Hirata, Koichi*; Kimura, Kenji*

In the secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), use of cluster ions has an advantage of having a high sensitivity of intact large molecular ions over monatomic ions. This paper presents further yield enhancement of the intact biomolecular ions with measuring the secondary ions emitted from a self-supporting thin film in the forward direction, which is the same direction as primary beams. Phenylalanine amino-acid films deposited on self-supporting thin SiN films were bombarded with 5-MeV C ions. Secondary ions emitted in the forward and backward directions were measured under the bombardments of the SiN and phenylalanine sides, respectively. The yield of intact phenylalanine molecular ions emitted in the forward direction is about one order of magnitude larger than the backward direction, while fragment ions of phenylalanine molecules are suppressed. This suggests a large potential of transmission cluster-ion SIMS for the analysis of biological materials.