Development of instrumentation for routine ToF-SIMS imaging analysis of biological material

The routine analysis of frozen-hydrated biological material is a goal that is highly sought after in the ToF-SIMS community. To this end we have developed a system based on an existing protocol developed elsewhere, but with several crucial advances. Here we report on the major design initiatives, some early performance characteristics and experimental data obtained. The system was designed with ease-of-use and reliability in mind in addition to performance, this should make the results repeatable. The device works on a freeze-fracture type method to expose pristine surface for SIMS analysis. An important performance characteristic that has emerged is one of time; the fracture stage can be cooled down to operating temperature within 30 min beginning of cooling. This is important as it minimises dead time at the beginning of an experimental session. We also present here images of freeze-fractured liposomes obtained with this hardware, showing two differing fracture regimes, we believe they are of similar quality to those obtained using other techniques. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.