Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) in the transmission mode generates secondary ion yields, which are typically an order of magnitude higher than in the customary reflection setup. The forward emission technique requires ultrathin samples, such as fractions of a monolayer or isolated nanosized objects deposited on substrates like a layer of graphene. We describe the methodology of transmission SIMS and cases of extreme detection sensitivity obtained in bombardment with C60 and Au4004+ of ∼1 keV/atom and Au28008+ of ∼360 eV/atom impact energies.
Verkhoturov et al. (Wed,) studied this question.