Picture (www source): TOF SIMS 5 (for commissioning to Rhodes University in November 2014)

NIC Manager, Dr Jonathan Britton and Senior Lecturer, Dr Philani Mashazi recently received awards to attend the 9th European Workshop on Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS Europe 2014) held at University of Münster, Germany from 7 – 9th September 2014. A user meeting for the new TOF-SIMS 5 (an equipment recently purchased and to be commissioned towards the end of October) was held also in Germany at ION TOF (the supplier of the TOF-SIMS 5). Dr Britton and Dr Mashazi appreciate the opportunity to have been amongst the seasoned users of the TOF SIMS. They both acknowledge the financial support from NRF – through the Equipment-related Travel and Training grant (UID 92576) for Dr Mashazi and Claude Leon Merit Award for both Dr Mashazi and Dr Britton. The trip was a success as they got to network and meet the supplier (ION-TOF) of the TOF SIMS 5 at their factory in Münster. During the workshop, various lectures were presented from the seasoned researcher as well as application specialist and were ranging from the basics to the advanced applications of TOF SIMS. Also various lectures discussed the strategies for data acquisition and analysis which were very much helpful. ION-TOF also had organized the daylong user event, where they were show casing their new equipments and upgrades to the already existing systems. Attending this user event was crucial as it highlighted the new software upgrades that will be available to us. Also the several ION TOF employees discussed the recent or forth-coming improvements and new equipments for various analyses. The Drs Mashazi and Britton managed to make strong network connections with various attendees from the National Physics Laboratory (potential supplier of our standard sample for equipment calibration) and Tascon (a start-up company from the University of Münster providing services for clients around Europe), just to name but a few. The TOF SIMS 5 equipment has wide ranging applications in various industries, such as automotive industry, microelectronics, polymer, glass, coatings, life sciences, paper and pharmaceutical.