Surface molecular imaging by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry for bioscience applications

Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) technique is well known for its high detection limit in case of impurity detection (∼ ppm to ppb level) and covering all the elements including H and He. The semiconductor industry, geological research groups and many other industries like automobile, paints, corrosion and catalysis etc. have extensively used it. Recently, due to the development of the static SIMS facility using a time-of-flight (TOF) type detector, this technique is being extensively used in medical and pharmaceutical research for the knowledge of the distribution of drugs as well as intrinsic elements and molecules in tissue sections and even within individual cells