Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry: 8th

This volume contains more than 200 of a total of 300 contributions presented as plenary, invited and contributed poster and oral presentations at the 8th International Conference on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry in Amsterdam, September 15-20, 1991. It is the intention of these proceedings to supply a summary of recent progress in the SIMS for those who were not able to attend SIMS VIII and, of course, for the participants of the conference. Probably the most important driving force for all progress in SIMs is its analytical application, developing in two main streams: one may be characterized by the development of more and more mature concepts in instrumentation and analytical techniques for extremely sensitive quantitative element analysis with high lateral and depth resolution. A second main stream may be characterized by an increasing application of SIMS to molecular and, in particular organic materials. These applications cover a wide variety of new and unexpected fields ranging from material to life sciences.
Molecular SIMS is a new challenge for the whole SIMS community, concerning understanding and predicting secondary ion emission processes as well as developing optimized instrumentation and analytical concepts. Looking at the programme of SIMS VIII and these proceedings, it can easily be seen that these two main streams really govern the whole programme. The editors hope that this volume will be a useful contribution to the future development of the whole field of secondary ion mass spectrometry.