Depth profiling energy resolution

In summary, CL can provide contactless and nondestructive analysis of a wide range of electronic properties of a variety of luminescent materials. Spatial resolution of less than 1 pm in the CL-SEM mode and detection limits of impurity concentrations down to 10 at/cm can be attained. CL depth profiling can be performed by varying the range of electron penetration that depends on the electron-beam energy the excitation depth can be varied from about 10 nm to several pm for electron-beam energies ranging between about 1 keV and 40 keV. 

Because a FIXE spectrum represents the int al of all the X rays created along the particle s path, a single FIXE measurement does not provide any depth profile information. All attempts to obtain general depth profiles using FIXE have involved multiple measurements that varied either the beam energy or the angle between the beam and the target, and have compared the results to those calculated for assumed elemental distributions. Frofiles measured in a few special cases surest that the depth resolution by nondestructive FIXE is only about 100 nm and that the absolute concentration values can have errors of 10-50%. 

MEIS has proven to be a powerful and intuitive tool for the study of the composition and geometrical structure of surfaces and interfaces several layers below a surface. The fact that the technique is truly quantitative is all but unique in surface science. The use of very high resolution depth profiling, made possible by the high-resolution energy detectors in MEIS, will find increased applicability in many areas of materials science. With continued technical development, resulting in less costly instrumentation, the technique should become of even wider importance in the years to come. 

NRA is a powerful method of obtaining concentration versus depth profiles of labelled polymer chains in films up to several microns thick with a spatial resolution of down to a few nanometres. This involves the detection of gamma rays produced by irradiation by energetic ions to induce a resonant nuclear reaction at various depths in the sample. In order to avoid permanent radioactivity in the specimen, the energy of the projectile is maintained at a relatively low value. Due to the large coulomb barrier around heavy nuclei, only light nuclei may be easily identified (atomic mass < 30). 

With LA-ICP-ToF-MS, using the 193 nm ArF laser (laser energy lOOmJ at 120(xm laser beam diameter), a depth resolution of 200 nm per laser shot was measured.121 LA-ICP-MS was utilized for depth profiling of copper coatings on steel with certified copper coating thicknesses from about... 

The intensities of the integrated signals may be evaluated on the basis of well-characterized standards. Consequently ISS provides qualitative and quantitative information on the composition of the surface. Noble gas ions that penetrate the first layers of the surface are backscattered as neutrals, and thus may not pass the energy analyzer. As a consequence, only ions backscattered at the first atomic layer are detected and the method is sampling the outmost atomic layer. A soft sputter process by noble gas ions yields an ISS depth profile with atomic depth resolution. Therefore ISS has been applied to the study of very thin oxide films, as e.g. of passivated Fe/Cr alloys. This method may be applied in addition to XPS due to its high depth resolution. 

---