Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS)uses a pulsed primary ion beam to desorb and ionize species from a sample surface. The resulting secondary ions are accelerated into a mass spectrometer, where they are mass-analyzed by measuring the time they take to travel from the sample surface to a detector. TOF-SIMS features 1) the analysis of the chemical composition of the material's top-surface, 2) high mass resolution (m/Dm=10,000), 3) wide mass range (1-10,000 amu), and 4) high lateral resolution (0.1 mm), which allow its wide applications to the fields of tribology, adhesion, surface contamination analysis, organic surface treatment analysis, polymer and biochemical analyses, and trouble shooting. Our laboratory installed TOF-SIMS instrument in 1997, and has attempted to apply it to the above fields. The results have confirmed that the qualitative analysis of organic materials on the top surface by TOF-SIMS is useful in these fields. On the other hand, lacks of database and quantitativeness have made it difficult to analyze TOF-SIMS data. Therefore, for the analysis of the data, especially in the case of trouble shooting, materials information and their standard spectra are required, and the information from other surface analyses such as XPS or IR will be helpful. This paper describes the principles, features, and applications of TOF-SIMS, including our data.

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