On the optimization of ion microprobes

The size of an ion probe is determined by many different factors such as virtual source size, magnification, probe current, and aberrations of its optical column. While operating or designing an ion optical system, it is often desirable to choose these parameters such that the optimum probe is obtained for the anticipated application. In this paper, we propose a routine which could be used to find the optimum magnification and aberrations of a system for given ion source parameters and probe requirements