From 29th October until 2nd November 2007, ION-TOF attended SIMS XVI – The 16th International Conference on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry in Kanazawa, Japan with several staff members.

We shared a booth with our local distributor, Hitachi High-Tech Trading. The main attraction on our stand was certainly the presentation of our exciting new product line, the Qtac, which gained a lot of interest from the SIMS community.

It was a pleasure for us to invite our users to a Buffet Dinner during the event. We hope that all of our guests had a good time; we very much enjoyed seeing so many customers in Japan.

ION-TOF and TASCON GmbH were represented at SIMS XVI with the following contributions:

“Effect of Primary Ion Mass and Composition on the Secondary Ion Emission from Cesium Implanted Surfaces“ (E. Niehuis, T. Grehl, F. Kollmer, R. Moellers, D. Rading – oral presentation)

“Fundamental Studies on the Emission of Secondary Ions from Molecular Surfaces Using Bismuth and C60 Cluster Ion Beams“ (F. Kollmer, R. Moellers, D. Rading, E. Niehuis – oral presentation)

“Matrix Effects and Information Depth under Polyatomic Bombardment“ (R. Kersting, M. Fartmann, D. Breitenstein, B. Hagenhoff – oral presentation)

“Depth Profiling of Organic Materials Using Improved Ion Beam Conditions“ (H.-G. Cramer, T. Grehl, F. Kollmer, R. Moellers, E. Niehuis, D. Rading – oral presentation)

“The Chemical Composition of Animal Cells Reconstructed from ToF-SIMS 2D as well as 3D Analysis“ (D. Breitenstein, B. Hagenhoff, R. Moellers, J. Wegener – oral contribution during the discussion session)

“Applications of Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometra (ToF-SIMS) in the Static and in the Dynamic Mode for Surface Analysis of Flat Steel Products“ (G. Mueller, F. Stahnke, M. Raulf, S. Kayser – oral presentation)

“Composition of Surfaces: A Comparison of LEIS and ToF-SIMS“ (D. Breitenstein, R. Kersting, B. Hagenhoff, R. ter Veen, H. Brongersma – poster presentation)

“Application of TOF-SIMS for for High Precision Ion Implant Dosimetry: Possibilities and Limitations“ (T. Grehl, R. Möllers, E. Niehuis, D. Rading – poster presentation)

After this interesting and successful conference in Japan, we are looking forward to meeting you again at SIMS Europe 2008, which will take place in Muenster/Germany from 14th-16th September 2008.
 

ION-TOF is launching an exciting new surface analysis instrument, the Qtac100. The new product will be presented at AVS 54^th , Seattle, USA, SIMS XVI and ALC'07, Kanazawa, Japan.

The Qtac¹⁰⁰ is a high sensitivity low energy ion scattering (LEIS) instrument able to chemically and quantitatively analyze the very top atomic layer of the sample, unlike all other surface analysis techniques, which integrate over several layers. This surface analysis instrument makes a significant addition to the range of instruments available to the surface analyst, and will quickly be established as an essential part of a comprehensive surface science laboratory.

This is a result of the collaboration with Professor Hidde Brongersma, a pioneer of LEIS and its applications firstly at the Technical University of Eindhoven, and then at Calipso BV. The combination of Professor Brongersma’s expertise and ION-TOF’s well established technologies have produced a powerful instrument for top atomic layer spectroscopy, surface chemical mapping, and both static non-destructive depth profiling and dynamic sputter depth profiling.

Applications are found particularly for catalysts, fuel cells, semiconductors, surface modification, thin layer pinhole detection, atomic resolution depth profiling, or any application requiring atomic layer analysis.

For more information about this unique instrument, please use the enquiry form on our Contact Page or check out out product page.

Professor Hidde H. Brongersma

On page 28 of the August 27th 2007 issue of C&EN (Chemical and Engineering News) the top ten chemical companies in patent achievement for this year are listed. A section of the annual list compiled by The Patent Board can be read  here for non ACS subscribers.

Is it a coincidence that eight of the top ten all own an ION-TOF TOF-SIMS instrument?

Why not contact one of our sales staff to find out how we can help you in all areas of surface and materials research?

Since its early days TOF-SIMS has been a versatile technique, but recently an even wider range of samples have been analyzed. The advent of such technologies as the Bismuth liquid metal ion gun has seen TOF-SIMS used routinely for imaging and depth profiling of organic and biological materials. However, Dr. Rana Sodhi and his colleagues at the University of Toronto may just have come up with the most unusual samples yet.

In a study shown on the Discovery Channel’s Conspiracy Test program the University of Toronto team used an ION-TOF TOF-SIMS IV in the investigation into claimed extraterrestrial materials. Originally aired on August 14th, the “Alien Abduction” show follows a study of metallic samples recovered from the bodies of claimed alien abduction victims. By combining TOF-SIMS and FE-SEM, the materials research group at Toronto was able to successfully determine the origin of these materials. So were they alien in nature? Well you’ll have to watch the show to find out! For those of you who missed the show it will be repeated on October 24th at 1pm ET.

A small preview can be seen here on YouTube.

Although today's fast moving world hardly ever allows a moment to look back, the turn of the year always provides a good opportunity for reviewing all that happened during the last twelve months.

We are very proud to announce that 2006 was the most successful year in our history.  In addition to further developing the historically strong markets such as USA, Europe and Japan, we also managed to enter new ones in 2006.

Our market success is mainly based on the TOF.SIMS 5 product line and its field-proven performance, which is still unmatched. Up to now, we have installed more than 50 TOF.SIMS 5 instruments worldwide. In 2006, we also introduced a new TOF-SIMS instrument to the market, the TOF.SIMS 300 R. With this first fully-automated tool, we strengthened our position as the preferred partner for the application of TOF-SIMS in the semiconductor industry. The first machine has already been successfully installed at the Center for Nanoelectronic Technology (CNT) in Dresden, Germany.

Not only have we made technological progress during the last year, but we also continued to put effort into our services. The last enhancement was the introduction of the Webex^TM online support, which was successfully tested in 2006 and officially launched five weeks ago (see news of 01/24/2007: "Professional help on-site in an instant").

Looking back on such a good year, we are very much looking forward to rising to the new technical and commercial challenges during 2007.

Professional service is a key factor for all our customers. High uptime, fast response, low maintenance costs and an excellent helpdesk are essential for meeting the demands of the modern industry. Therefore, the ION-TOF Service is continually improving its structure, functions and offered services.

Today ION-TOF expands its services to a new form of on-line support. With this new service, professional help is just a mouse click away. In addition to the on-line support via VPN, ION-TOF now offers on-line support via Webex®. This new technology enables our service engineers to check the systems on-line while the customer can follow all actions and discuss the problems simultaneously. With Webex® the engineer can also efficiently assist the customer with all kinds of operational questions.

For further information on this new service, please contact our Support Team.