The company was founded by Prof. Alfred Benninghoven, Dr. Ewald Niehuis and Mr. Thomas Heller in 1989 to commercialise the original research carried out by Prof. Benninghoven and his team at the University of Münster in Germany from the early 80's.
TOF-SIMS has become a standard requirement for a surface analysis laboratory, and has overtaken other longer established surface techniques, both in the performance and the number of units now being sold.
IONTOF continues to make considerable development effort. Its policy to build the most innovative ion beam technology for surface science, and the continued investment in the development of our instruments will produce new instruments with even better performance. The most recent example is the innovative Qtac product line for high sensitivity LEIS, which was developed by IONTOF in collaboration with the leading group of Prof. Brongersma at Calipso BV.