Patent ID: 8093556

Claim:
A method for analyzing a sample, comprising: generating first ions and second ions, the first ions having at least one of: a first predefinable mass and a first predefinable number of elementary charges, and the second ions having at least one of: a second predefinable mass and a second predefinable number of elementary charges, wherein the first ions are different from the second ions according to at least one of: (i) the second predefinable mass being different from the first predefinable mass, and (ii) the second predefinable number of elementary charges being different from the first predefinable number of elementary charges; generating an ion beam from the first ions and the second ions; selecting, as selected ions, the first ions or the second ions in the ion beam; directing the selected ions to the sample, at least a portion of the sample being prepared using the selected ions; generating an electron beam; directing the electron beam onto the prepared portion of the sample; detecting spatially distributed electrons scattered from the sample; and analyzing a spatial distribution of the scattered electrons.