Karen Rieck Publishes in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry

Karen Rieck Publishes in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry

New Mexico Consortium scientist, Karen Rieck, recently published her work titled, Depth profiling and standardization from the back side of a sample for accurate analyses: Emphasis on quantifying low-fluence, shallow implants in diamond-like carbon in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

Dr. Rieck and colleagues developed a new technique for taking measurements using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). The driving force for developing this technique came from issues encountered when measuring solar wind collected and returned to Earth by NASA’s Genesis spacecraft. The entire solar wind sample was very small – the mass equivalent of a few grains of salt spread out over several square meters of the collection surface. With this small sample of solar wind ions, their task was to analyze the abundances of minor elements. This task was made even more difficult due to an unusually hard landing upon return to Earth where the solar wind collectors were shattered and their surfaces exposed to terrestrial contaminants.

This research used back side depth profiling and internal standardization to analyze low-concentration implants situated very near the surface of a wafer or thin film. The technique Rieck and colleagues reported in this publication allows quantification of an ion implant whether or not a suitable matrix-appropriate standard is available from vendors, and allowed them to accurately and precisely quantify low concentrations of elements located within 500 nm of a wafer’s surface. Also, application to analyses of trace, near-surface elements in anhydrous, amorphous tetrahedrally coordinated diamond-like carbon (DLC or ta-C) demonstrates that internal standardization, the basis of this technique, can mitigate matrix effects in some nonuniform samples.

To read the entire article see: Depth profiling and standardization from the back side of a sample for accurate analyses: Emphasis on quantifying low-fluence, shallow implants in diamond-like carbon