Analysis of paint defects by mass spectroscopy (LAMMA®/ToF-SIMS)

Abstract In this paper, two surface sensitive mass spectroscopic methods–laser microprobe mass analysis (LAMMA ® ) 1 and time of flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) – and their efficiency at the analysis of paint defects are presented. For these two similar methods, the differences especially concerning the ion formation at the target surface are pointed out as well as the resulting effect on the kind of information. While LAMMA ® mainly provides inorganic information about the surface composition, ToF-SIMS offers the ability to characterize organic materials and especially to distinguish between different silicone oils. The advantages of each method are shown for typical paint defects.