Earticle

The aim of this work is signal processing of Secondary Ions Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) profiles for improving the depth resolution beyond its physical and instrumental limits. Indeed, we propose a new iterative deconvolution algorithm based on Tikhonov-Miller regularization where a priori model of solution is included. The latter is a denoisy and pre-deconvoluted signal obtained by wavelets shrinkage algorithm. It is shown that this new algorithm gives best results without artifacts and oscillations related to noise. This leads to a significant improvement of the depth resolution and peaks’ maximums. The SIMS profiles are obtained by analysis of delta layers of boron in a silicon matrix using Cameca-Ims6f instrument at oblique incidence. In the light of the obtained results, the advantages and limitations of this new method as well as suggestions for future work are presented and discussed.