NanoSIMS has been used to study a range of problems in materials sciences, such as dopant and contamination effects in semiconductors, hydrogen damage in steels, oxidation and corrosion, crack and defect evolution, as well as diffusion and segregation processes.

Depth profiles can also be generated, providing information about chemical variations as a function of depth from the surface. This information is very useful for the analysis of thin films and layered structures, such as those found in semiconductor devices. The below figure shows a NanoSIMS map of a steel alloy produced by strip-casting, revealing information about the segregation of the substitutional solute elements, silicon, aluminium and carbon during the solidification process.