RESOLUTION OF PHASES IN HETEROGENEOUS MATERIALS BY AUGER AND ELECTRON ENERGY LOSS SPECTROSCOPIES - QUANTITATIVE AES ANALYSIS BY SPECTRAL SYNTHESIS

Jozef Liday - Peter Vogrinčič - Juraj Breza

   This work demonstrates that a combination of AES with EELS employed in such a way that the peaks of plasmon losses are created by Auger electrons after they have lost part of their energy for plasmon oscillation allows to study the phase properties of the material contained within a distance given by the inelastic mean free path of Auger electrons from the place of primary Auger excitation, and in certain cases it may also be possible to determine the size of phases. In the case of SiO_x layers we observed that they comprise particles of SiO₂ uniformly distributed in the bulk of Si. Heterogeneity of SiO_x layers was confirmed by quantitative AES based on a synthesis of reference spectra of single phases, thus of Si and SiO₂.

Keywords: Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS), quantitative AES, spectral synthesis, heterogeneous materials

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