This Research Topic is Volume II of a series. The previous volume can be found here: Advances in Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry

Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) uses focused and energetic primary ions to bombard a surface of materials, emitting “secondary” ions for the detection of mass-to-charge ratios. SIMS has been recognized for a long as a destructive technique and used to perform elemental or isotopic analysis. This mode of operation is called dynamic SIMS, which has found major applications in the semiconductor industry and geosciences. Dynamic SIMS usually uses continuous reactive ion sources such as cesium or oxygen and magnetic or quadrupole mass analyzers. The main advantages of dynamic SIMS are its excellent depth resolution (down to 1 nm) and extremely high sensitivity (down to sub-ppb). SIMS can also provide mass imaging capabilities, in either microscope or microprobe way. The introduction of NanoSIMS instruments has made SIMS as a powerful chemical imaging tool for biological and materials sciences with a spatial resolution of ~50 nm.

Another mode of operation, developed by Alfred Benninghoven in the 1970s, is called static SIMS, in which the surface is bombarded with a very low ion dose so that the surface would remain unchanged during an analysis and the mass spectra obtained contain not only atomic ions but also molecular (or cluster) ions characteristic of the virgin surface. From this perspective, static SIMS is also called molecular SIMS. Static SIMS has been rapidly expanded in the past decades thanks to the introduction of high-performance time-of-flight (ToF) analyzer and more recently the development of polyatomic primary ion sources, such as Au3+ (or Aun+), Bi3+, SF5+ C60+, and argon cluster ion source as well as other novel giant cluster ion sources. Due to the virtues of high sensitivity (ppm to ppb) and spatial resolution down to tens of nm, nowadays ToF-SIMS has become a powerful technique for 2D and 3D imaging (coordinated with use of the second ion beam as sputtering ion source) of solid materials and biological tissues and cells.

In this Research Topic, we welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review and Perspective articles on themes including, but not limited to:

• Research in SIMS instrumentation including primary ion sources, sampling, mass analyzer and data process software;
• Research in SIMS imaging including sample preparation and re-construction programs of 2D/3D images;
• Application of SIMS in characterization of advanced materials, including semiconductors, batteries and polymers;
• Application of SIMS in geoscience such as geochronology, geochemistry and cosmochemistry; Application of SIMS in environmental science, e.g., characterization of aerosol particles;
• Application of SIMS in biological sciences, e.g., distribution of drugs and other molecules in biological tissues and cells.

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