September 2009

The Surface and Nanoanalysis group had a very strong presence at the recent 17th International Conference on SIMS (SIMS XVII) in Toronto. Eight presentations were made, including 1 invited, 2 orals and 5 posters  illustrated the depth and breadth of the work by NPL. A major feature of the SIMS XVII conference was the recent VAMAS interlaboratory study on organic depth profiling using the novel NPL organic delta layer system, led by Alex Shard. This featured in 10 presentations from other groups and was key to the discussion session on improving the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms in cluster sputtering of organics. Further successes included Felicia Green winning one of the four poster prizes for 'G-DB1: A new web-based system for identifying molecules using G-SIMS and SMILES', which attracted many positive comments.