Mono-layer Compositional Analysis of Surface of Mineral Grains by Time-of-Flight Secondary-Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS)

Although the bulk composition of materials is one of the major considerations in extractive metallurgy and environmental science, surface composition and topography (edges and dislocations are preferred sites for physico-chemical reactions) control surface reactivity, and consequently play a major role in determining metallurgical phenomena and pollution by heavy metals and organics. An understanding of interaction mechanisms of different chemical species with the mineral surface in an aqueous media is very important in natural environment and metallurgical processing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) has been used as an ex-situ analytical technique, but the material to be analyzed can be any size from 100㎛ up to about 1 ㎝. It can also measure mixed solids powders, but it is impossible to ascertain the original source of resulting x-ray signals where they were emitted from, since it radiates and scans the macro sample surface area.