In Sputtered Neutral Mass Spectrometry (SNMS) the sputtered neutrals are ionised at some distance away from the surface whilst suppressing the SIMS ions thereby decoupling the sputtering and ionisation effects.

The benefits are that one overcomes the SIMS matrix effects providing more accurate quantification in binary and ternary compounds or other complex matrices.

The detection limits in SNMS are ~ 1e18 atoms/cc.