Both pharmaceuticals and polymer additives in a variety of polymers have been studied by ToF-SIMS. A quantitative study was done on several chemical systems of the relative enhancement offered by a gold cluster primary ion beam compared to a gallium primary ion beam. In general, the An LMIG offers a significant enhancement of the small molecule ion yield relative to Ga+ sputtering. The atomic Au+ ion provides at least a 10x ion yield enhancement compared to Ga+ sputtering due to its higher mass. It is interesting that the Au-2(+) primary ion results in a significant similar to10x enhancement over Au-\(+) sputtering while using Au-3(+) only provides a similar to2x further enhancement over Au-2(+). (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.