| Rationale: In contaminated soil, copper (Cu) is commonly distributed among various very small particles. To enlighten the qualitative distribution of Cu in a contaminated Technosol (a soil developed from deposited technogenic material) on the sub‐micron scale, we used nano‐scale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS). Methods: We studied seven areas (up to 40 μm × 40 μm) on a thin section of a soil horizon by NanoSIMS, measuring 12C−, 18O−, 32S−, 63Cu− and 56Fe16O−. We evaluated the NanoSIMS measurements with a novel digital image processing tool to enlighten the composition of measured areas and thus the distribution of Cu at the sub‐micron scale. Image processing comprised spatial and spectral smoothing, normalization, endmember extraction and... |
