SIMS analysis: Development and evaluation 1994 summary report

Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) was evaluated for applicability to the characterization of salt cake and environmental samples. Salt cake is representative of waste found in radioactive waste storage tanks located at Hanford and at other DOE sites; it consists of nitrate, nitrite, hydroxide, and ferrocyanide salts, and the samples form the tanks are extremely radioactive. SIMS is an attractive technology for characterizing these samples because it has the capability for producing speciation information with little or no sample preparation, and it generates no additional waste. Experiments demonstrated that substantial speciation information could be readily generated using SIMS: metal clusters which include nitrate, nitrite, hydroxide, carbonate, cyanide, ferrocyanide and ferricyanide were observed. In addition, the mechanism of SIMS desorption of tributyl phosphate (TBP) was clearly identified, and minimum detection limit studies involving TBP were performed. Procurements leading to the construction of an ion trap SIMS instrument were initiated. Technology transfer of SIMS components to three instrument vendors was initiated. For FY-95, the SIMS evaluation program has been redirected toward identification of metal species on environmental samples