History - Compston

The first ion microprobes were able to resolve individual unit masses, but could not deal with the complex molecular interferences produced in the sputtering process. Professor William Compston of ANU saw the solution to this problem in the design of a large ion microprobe capable of high mass resolution while maintaining high sensitivity. And so SHRIMP was born. Dr Steve Clement, an RSES graduate student who designed his own mass spectrometer for his PhD, was retained to design SHRIMP I based on ion optical parameters of Professor Hisashi Matsuda of Osaka University.