Nondestructive quantitative XPS imaging of depth distribution of atoms on the nanoscale

Hajati, Shaaker; Coultas, Sarah; Blomfield, C.; Tougaard, S.

doi:10.1002/sia.2633

Cited by 25 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…where the following rule applies [12] 0 < L * <≈ 1, most atoms are located in the surface region (surface enrichment); ≈ −1 < L * < 0, most atoms are at depths greater than the inelastic mean free path (surface depletion); |L * | > 2, homogeneous distribution.…”

Section: Determination Of Surface Enrichment and Depletionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An application for near‐real‐time analysis of XPS data

Lea

Swanson

Haack

et al. 2010

Surface & Interface Analysis

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A platform-independent application for the analysis of XPS data has been developed with the goal of providing rapid data processing of survey spectra at a more sophisticated level than is typically performed. This application uses an expert systems approach to invoke a set of rules that are applied to the data. The application then uses simple, automated data analysis calculations to generate information on the thickness of any carbon contamination layer, atomic composition corrected for carbon contamination, and segregation (layering) information as soon as the data are collected. Batch processing and automated report generation are features incorporated into this application that would also improve the throughput for data analysis, resulting in substantial labor reduction and cost savings.

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Section: Determination Of Surface Enrichment and Depletionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An application for near‐real‐time analysis of XPS data

Lea

Swanson

Haack

et al. 2010

Surface & Interface Analysis

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“…An example is shown in Fig. 13 where the algorithm was applied to XPS spectra taken at a lateral resolution of of a nominal 6 nm thick octadiene strip on a Ag substrate [2,17]. It is seen that the structure of the sample can be correctly identified layer by layer with sub depth resolution.…”

Section: Indirect Imaging With Quases Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Applications of Inelastic Background XPS Analysis: 3D Imaging and HAXPES

Tougaard

2017

JSA

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Technological applications of nano-structured materials are steadily increasing and to create materials with optimized properties, it is of utmost importance to have non-destructive techniques to characterize elemental depth distributions at the scale. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is ideal for this because it is sensitive on the nm depth scale and it is today widely used by industry. In the large majority of labs it is used within a formalism that relies on the measured peak intensities. In this paper we first point out the large uncertainties and the misleading results that result from such a formalism. We then review techniques that rely on analysis of a wider range of the energy spectrum around the XPS peak rather than just at the peak energy. This results in a much improved accuracy. It is first shown how a simple visual inspection of a survey XPS spectrum can be used to immediately get a rough picture of the nano-structure of the sample. For more accurate quantitative analysis, algorithms have been developed which are implemented in the QUASES (Quantitative Analysis of Surfaces by Electron Spectroscopy) software. The application of this software in practical analysis is discussed. Then it is discussed how this can be combined with synchrotron radiation at high photon energies (HAXPES) to provide analysis of structures buried more than 50 nm in a stack. Finally we discuss a newer algorithm which is less accurate but which has the advantage that it is suitable for automated XPS analysis for determination of the structure. This can be useful for routine analysis and has also been applied to 3-dimensional imaging of surface nano-structures.

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“…Its validity was investigated through series of systematic experiments, some of which were reviewed in Refs. [9,11]. The method relies on a visual inspection of the agreement between the measured spectrum and a model spectrum, for different depth profiles over a wide energy range.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In that work, we applied a rule [12] to qualitatively categorize the pixels into three groups: those pixels where atoms are at depths <1k (surface), at depths P1k (bulk), and where atoms have a roughly constant concentration throughout the depth interval from 0 to 3k (homogeneous), respectively. In a further paper [15], we also made a quantitative test of the algorithm by analyzing sets of Ag 3d XPS spectra taken from a series of samples with different effective thicknesses of plasma patterned octadiene (2, 4, 6 and 8 nm) on a silver substrate [15]. We determined images of the amount of silver atoms in the outermost few nanometers of the samples.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%