Scanning Auger microscope

Although this technique is not normally used for thin polymer films for the reasons described before, it can be used for analyzing the surface of polymer composites containing conductive fillers, e.g. carbon fibers. In addition, because of the surface specificity, the sampled area can be maintained almost identically to the beam cross-section so that the scanning Auger microscope (SAM) can have a spatial resolution that is much better than that of microprobe analysis. 

Figure 9. Elemental maps obtained using a scanning auger microscope—soot (C) particle trapped in a copper grid...

LEED low-energy electron diffraction SAM scanning Auger microscope/microscopy... 

A multi-technique analytical system (AES, SAM, SEM, XPS, EDX, BSE) based around a high-resolution scanning Auger microscope... 

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. 

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). 

Modem instmments use all of these signals to extract information about a sample. These include the scanning electron microscope, the transmission electron microscope, the electron microprobe, and the auger nanoprobe. For many of these techniques, a conductive... 

Some of the techniques described in this chapter used most widely today are Auger electron spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, electron-probe micro-analysis, low energy electron diffraction, scanning electron microscope, ion scattering spectroscopy, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy. The solid surface, after liberation of electrons, can be analyzed directly by AES, XPS, ISS, and EPMA (nondestructive techniques), or by liberation of ions from surfaces using SIMS (involving the destruction of the surface). Apart from the surface techniques, reflectance-absorbance infrared (RAIR) spectroscopy has also been employed for film characterization (Lindsay et al., 1993 Yin et al., 1993). Some... 

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