This work presents the development and application of the Ion Peak Analyzer algorithm, an automated tool designed to investigate radiation effects in sequentially recorded secondary ion mass spectra. It automates the identification of secondary ions and the fitting of functions for determination of physical parameters, such as damage cross section. It was successfully applied to investigate polymeric films irradiated with 6 MeV Cu 4 + , 9 and 12 MeV Cl 5 + ions. Several peaks were identified in each spectrum, where time-of-flight, maximum and sum of counts, width and higher momenta were determined. For the total primary ion fluences reached in the experiments, the surface coverage induced by the ion impacts following a simple overlapping model was found to be moderate to strong, indicating the onset of a dynamic regime. The damage cross section values were found to be concentrated in a narrow band around 1 0 − 13 cm 2 and the two quantification metrics employed (maximum count and sum of counts) yielded consistent results. Moreover, a critical comparison with literature data demonstrated a clear dependence of the damage cross section on the measurement method. Notably, techniques that monitor material ejection consistently yielded larger damage cross sections compared to those that detect purely chemical changes. Finally, a strong influence of the primary ion species on the fragmentation pattern is observed.
D’Avila et al. (Thu,) studied this question.