Compensation of Time-of-Flight Drift Using an Internal Reference Ion during Long-Duration LIMAS Depth Profiling
- 1Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060–0810, Japan
Abstract
In this study, the temporal behavior and compensation of time-of-flight (TOF) drift during long-duration depth profiling using Laser Ionization Mass Nanoscope (LIMAS) were investigated. Noble gas depth profiling by LIMAS requires detection of weak isotope signals with nanometer-scale depth resolution. However, such measurements often take several hours to a couple of days, during which TOF peak-position drift and statistical uncertainty may affect analytical precision. In this study, a 4He-implanted olivine substrate was analyzed as a test sample. The TOF spectra were processed by depth-layer stacking, peak extraction, and peak-position analysis. The 24Mg2+ peak was used as a matrix-derived internal reference to monitor and compensate for TOF drift. The peak-position shifts of measured ions showed clear linear correlations with the 24Mg2+ peak shift, indicating that the observed TOF drift is largely systematic. A 24Mg2+-based compensation reduced the peak-position fluctuations of the other ion species to less than 1 ns and improved the mass resolving power. These results demonstrate that the 24Mg2+ peak can be used as an internal reference for TOF drift compensation during long-duration measurements, providing a robust approach for micro- to nanoscale noble gas depth profiling using LIMAS.
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BibTeX
@article{bajo2026compensation,
title = {{Compensation of Time-of-Flight Drift Using an Internal Reference Ion during Long-Duration LIMAS Depth Profiling}},
author = {Ken-ichi Bajo},
journal = {Mass Spectrometry},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.5702/massspectrometry.a0201},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5702/massspectrometry.a0201},
note = {CC BY-NC 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Compensation of Time-of-Flight Drift Using an Internal Reference Ion during Long-Duration LIMAS Depth Profiling
AU - Ken-ichi Bajo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/30
JO - Mass Spectrometry
DO - 10.5702/massspectrometry.a0201
UR - https://doi.org/10.5702/massspectrometry.a0201
AB - In this study, the temporal behavior and compensation of time-of-flight (TOF) drift during long-duration depth profiling using Laser Ionization Mass Nanoscope (LIMAS) were investigated. Noble gas depth profiling by LIMAS requires detection of weak isotope signals with nanometer-scale depth resolution. However, such measurements often take several hours to a couple of days, during which TOF peak-position drift and statistical uncertainty may affect analytical precision. In this study, a 4He-implanted olivine substrate was analyzed as a test sample. The TOF spectra were processed by depth-layer stacking, peak extraction, and peak-position analysis. The 24Mg2+ peak was used as a matrix-derived internal reference to monitor and compensate for TOF drift. The peak-position shifts of measured ions showed clear linear correlations with the 24Mg2+ peak shift, indicating that the observed TOF drift is largely systematic. A 24Mg2+-based compensation reduced the peak-position fluctuations of the other ion species to less than 1 ns and improved the mass resolving power. These results demonstrate that the 24Mg2+ peak can be used as an internal reference for TOF drift compensation during long-duration measurements, providing a robust approach for micro- to nanoscale noble gas depth profiling using LIMAS.
SN - 2187-137X
SN - 2186-5116
ER -