U.S.-Germany Workshop on Postionization Techniques in Surface Analysis: University Park, Pennsylvania, May 15-17,1991

This award supports the participation of twelve U.S. chemists in a U.S.-German workshop in analytical chemistry to be held in mid-May, 1991, at The Pennsylvania State University. The meeting is organized jointly by Professor Nicholas Winograd of Penn State and Professor Hans Oechsner of the University of Kaiserslautern. It is supported jointly by NSF and its German counterpart, the Deutsche Forschungs- gemeinschaft; participants are primarily from the U.S. and Germany. The workshop will address postionization techniques in surface analysis. The revolution in materials science has made this new field a vital approach for characterizing surfaces, thin films and solids. These methods have applications in such diverse fields as microelectronics, superconductivity, environmental assessment, geology, and biomedical materials characterization. The techniques generally involve the use of a high energy probe such as a laser, electron or ion beam to desorb a portion of the sample into the gas phase. Now, new techniques to ionize these species are promising to yield improved sensitivity limits and novel approaches for composi- tional studies. These techniques include electron impact, plasma and glow discharge sources, and single and multiphoton excitation using lasers. The proposed workshop will bring together experts in these areas to assess the status and future development of postionization methodologies. Issues such as depth profiling, quantitation and imaging will receive special attention.