AUGER ELECTRON SPECTROSCOPY OF SILICON CARBIDE

Rastislav Kosiba - Jozef Liday - Gernot Ecke - Oliver Ambacher - Juraj Breza

   The paper is devoted to evaluating the concentration of silicon on the surface of SiC exposed to bombardment by Ar⁺ ions. For quantitative interpretation of the measured Auger spectra, the method was used in which the Auger current is determined as the area below the Auger peak in the direct N(E) spectrum after subtracting the background of inelastically scattered Auger electrons of the given peak and of the so-called true secondary electrons. We have found that bombardment of SiC by Ar⁺ ions with energy 1 keV at an angle of 68^o with respect to the surface normal and with the sample rotating at 6 rpm leads to Si depletion of SiC in comparison with its stoichiometric composition. The retrieved concentration of Si was 35.4 at/nm³ in the case of using the Si LVV spectra, and 39.7 at/nm³ if Si KLL spectra were used.

Keywords: AES, quantitative analysis, sputtering, SiC, AES depth profiling

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