Glow Discharge Spectrometries provide direct measurement of the chemical composition of solid materials as a function of depth, with nanometre resolution and the capability to measure both thin and thick layers.

 These techniques rely on the fast sputtering of a representative area of the material of interest by a high density (1014/cm3) and low energy GD plasma. The same GD plasma assures the excitation/ionisation of the sputtered species that are detected in real time by the spectrometer proving compositional depth profile analysis.

When a high resolution optical system is used, the resulting technique is called Pulsed RF GDOES, when the plasma is coupled to ToF MS detection, it is named Plasma Profiling Time of Flight Ion Mass Spectrometry.

Various applications are presented and aspects of analytical performance with regards to sensitivity, depth resolution, quantification, repeatability and sample throughput are discussed.