Auger analyzer

AES analysis is done in one of four modes of analysis. The simplest, most direct, and most often used mode of operation of an Auger spectrometer is the point analysis mode, in which the primary electron beam is positioned on the area of interest on the sample and an Auger survey spectrum is taken. The next most often used mode of analysis is the depth profiling mode. The additional feature in this mode is that an ion beam is directed onto the same area that is being Auger analyzed. The ion beam sputters material off the surface so that the analysis measures the variation, in depth, of the composition of the new surfaces, which are being continu-... 

In other articles in this section, a method of analysis is described called Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS), in which material is sputtered from a surface using an ion beam and the minor components that are ejected as positive or negative ions are analyzed by a mass spectrometer. Over the past few years, methods that post-ion-ize the major neutral components ejected from surfaces under ion-beam or laser bombardment have been introduced because of the improved quantitative aspects obtainable by analyzing the major ejected channel. These techniques include SALI, Sputter-Initiated Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (SIRIS), and Sputtered Neutral Mass Spectrometry (SNMS) or electron-gas post-ionization. Post-ionization techniques for surface analysis have received widespread interest because of their increased sensitivity, compared to more traditional surface analysis techniques, such as X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), and their more reliable quantitation, compared to SIMS. 

Laser ionization mass spectrometry or laser microprobing (LIMS) is a microanalyt-ical technique used to rapidly characterize the elemental and, sometimes, molecular composition of materials. It is based on the ability of short high-power laser pulses (-10 ns) to produce ions from solids. The ions formed in these brief pulses are analyzed using a time-of-flight mass spectrometer. The quasi-simultaneous collection of all ion masses allows the survey analysis of unknown materials. The main applications of LIMS are in failure analysis, where chemical differences between a contaminated sample and a control need to be rapidly assessed. The ability to focus the laser beam to a diameter of approximately 1 mm permits the application of this technique to the characterization of small features, for example, in integrated circuits. The LIMS detection limits for many elements are close to 10 at/cm, which makes this technique considerably more sensitive than other survey microan-alytical techniques, such as Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) or Electron Probe Microanalysis (EPMA). Additionally, LIMS can be used to analyze insulating sam-... 

Similarly to Eq. (2.6), fCis a proportionality constant containing fixed operating conditions, for example incident electron current density, transmission of the analyzer at the kinetic energy Ea, efficiency of the detector at the kinetic energy Ea, and the probability of the Auger transition XYZ. 

If an incident electron beam of sufficient energy for AES is rastered over a surface in a manner similar to that in a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and if the analyzer is set to accept electrons of Auger energies characteristic of a particular element, then an elemental map or image is again obtained, similar to XPS for the Quantum 2000 (Sect. 2.1.2.5). 

The control of materials purity and of environmental conditions requires to implement physico-chemical analysis tools like ESC A, RBS, AUGER, SEM, XTM, SIMS or others. The principle of SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy) is shown in Eig. 31 an ion gun projects common ions (like 0+, Ar+, Cs+, Ga+,. ..) onto the sample to analyze. In the same time a flood gun projects an electron beam on the sample to neutralize the clusters. The sample surface ejects electrons, which are detected with a scintillator, and secondary ions which are detected by mass spectrometry with a magnetic quadrupole. 

Fig. 42 —AES surface survey of elements in the disk substrate surface after polishing. The slurry contains 6 wt % Si02 particles with a diameter of 30 nm, 1 wt % oxidizer and 2 wt % lubricant in Dl water, and pH value of the slurry is 1.8. (a) Elements in the disk surface, (b) deep distribution of the elements. (The contents of elements and their deep distribution in the polished surface were analyzed by using a PHI 680 auger nanoprobe under determining conditions as follows ion beam current of 1 u,A, ion beam voltage of 2 kV, electron beam current of 10 nA, electron beam voltage of 10 kV and scan area of 20 fj.m by 20...

XPS spectra were obtained using a Perkin-Elmer Physical Electronics (PHI) 555 electron spectrometer equipped with a double pass cylindrical mirror analyzer (CMA) and 04-500 dual anode x-ray source. The x-ray source used a combination magnesium-silicon anode, with collimation by a shotgun-type collimator (1.). AES/SAM spectra and photomicrographs were obtained with a Perkin-Elmer PHI 610 Scanning Auger Microprobe, which uses a single pass CMA with coaxial lanthanum hexaboride (LaBe) electron gun. 

The apparatuses used for the studies of both ammonia synthesis emd hydrodesulfurization were almost identical, consisting of a UHV chamber pumped by both ion and oil diffusion pumps to base pressures of 1 x10 " Torr. Each chamber was equipped with Low Energy Electron Diffraction optics used to determine the orientation of the surfaces and to ascertain that the surfaces were indeed well-ordered. The LEED optics doubled as retarding field analyzers used for Auger Electron Spectroscopy. In addition, each chamber was equipped with a UTI 100C quadrupole mass spectrometer used for analysis of background gases and for Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy studies. 

The surface reactions were investigated by a combination of AES and TPR studies, with authentic samples of the expected products being used to calibrate the signals from the two techniques. The Auger spectra were obtained with a single pass cylindrical mirror analyzer operated with a modulation amplitude of 4 eV the surface heating rate in the TPR studies was 2 K/s. 

Solid tailings were collected from test-pits and auger cuttings from boreholes in both the oxidized and reduced tailings. The tailings were analyzed for total metals. Sequential extraction of the tailings allowed the mobility of the metals to be assessed. Evaporites were also collected from the surface of the tailings. 

---