Patent ID: 7188031

Claim:
A method for acquiring information from a device, which comprises a substrate and a plurality of biological materials disposed on the surface of the substrate, wherein the information is acquired from the surface using time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, the method comprising at least the steps of: irradiating the surface with a pulsed primary ion beam on different positions of the surface in a discontinuous pattern, which is a specifically programmed or a random pattern to suppress an influence of a charge-up of an irradiated area, wherein the irradiated area with the primary ion beam in one scan is not duplicated, and the primary ion beam has a beam size of a smaller area than an area to be measured on the surface of the device; conducting mass-analysis of secondary ions via time of flight, the secondary ions being generated by irradiating the surface with the pulsed primary ion beam; and reconstructing analyzed results obtained by conducting the mass-analysis to form two-dimensional information on the basis of the pattern of the irradiating pulsed primary ion beam, wherein a volumetric resistivity of the substrate is not less than 10 10 ohm·cm at 300K.