Auger electron spectroscopy electronic materials

A popular electron-based teclmique is Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), which is described in section Bl.25.2.2. In AES, a 3-5 keV electron beam is used to knock out iimer-shell, or core, electrons from atoms in the near-surface region of the material. Core holes are unstable, and are soon filled by either fluorescence or Auger decay. In the Auger... 

Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) is a technique used to identify the elemental composition, and in many cases, the chemical bonding of the atoms in the surface region of solid samples. It can be combined with ion-beam sputtering to remove material from the surface and to continue to monitor the composition and chemistry of the remaining surface as this surface moves into the sample. It uses an electron beam as a probe of the sample surface and its output is the energy distribution of the secondary electrons released by the probe beam from the sample, although only the Ai er electron component of the secondaries is used in the analysis. 

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. 

Scanning Auger Electron Spectroscopy (SAM) and SIMS (in microprobe or microscope modes). SAM is the most widespread technique, but generally is considered to be of lesser sensitivity than SIMS, at least for spatial resolutions (defined by primary beam diameter d) of approximately 0.1 im. However, with a field emission electron source, SAM can achieve sensitivities tanging from 0.3% at. to 3% at. for Pranging from 1000 A to 300 A, respectively, which is competitive with the best ion microprobes. Even with competitive sensitivity, though, SAM can be very problematic for insulators and electron-sensitive materials. 

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-... 

Auger electrons are not just a by-product of XPS. These highly surface-sensitive, primarily element-specific electrons form the basis of a spectroscopy which is highly appreciated in the fields of materials and surface science, namely Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) [5,17,19,20]. 

Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), 76 495 24 84-87, 94-97. See also AES instrumentation archaeological materials, 5 744 quantitative, 24 98 Auger sensitivity factors, 24 96 Auger spectra, 24 95-97, 98 Auger transitions, 24 95 Augite, in coal, 6 718 Au(III) halides, 72 706. See also Gold(III) entries... 

GD-OES (glow discharge optical emission spectrometry) are applied. AES (auger electron spectroscopy), AFM (atomic force microscopy) and TRXF (transmission reflection X-ray fluorescence analysis) have been successfully used, especially in the semiconductor industry and in materials research. 

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