Finely focused beams extracted from liquid metal ion sources (LMIS) provide a wealth of secondary signals which can be exploited to create high resolution images by the scanning method. The images of scanning ion microscopy (SIM) encompass a variety of contrast mechanisms which we classify into two broad categories: a) Emission contrast and b) Analytical contrast.Emission contrast refers to those mechanisms inherent to the emission of secondaries by solids under ion bombardment. The contrast-carrying signals consist of ion-induced secondary electrons (ISE) and secondary ions (ISI). Both signals exhibit i) topographic emission contrast due to the existence of differential geometric emission and collection effects, ii) crystallographic emission contrast, due to primary ion channeling phenomena and differential oxidation of crystalline surfaces, iii) chemical emission or Z-contrast, related to the dependence of the secondary emission yields on the Z and surface chemical state of the target.
