| AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Applied Surface Science | Thursday Sessions |
| Session AS+SS-ThA |
| Session: | Advances in 2D Chemical Mapping and Data Analysis |
| Presenter: | Jon Treacy, Thermo Fisher Scientific, UK |
| Authors: | J.P.W. Treacy, Thermo Fisher Scientific, UK C. Deeks, Thermo Fisher Scientific, UK P. Mack, Thermo Fisher Scientific, UK T.S. Nunney, Thermo Fisher Scientific, UK |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Surface structure and chemistry are properties that are crucial to the successful production and operation of numerous devices, materials and coatings. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is an ideal tool for investigating these properties due to its inherent surface sensitivity, and ability to quantify the chemical states detected.
Whilst XPS is most often used for point analysis and/or depth profiling, it is also able to produce compositional maps of multi-phase materials. This is of particular use in scenarios where other surface science techniques are unsuitable, for example especially rough surfaces that cannot be imaged using SPM or surfaces with multiple phases of similar elemental composition, which cannot be differentiated by SEM-EDS. However the widespread implementation of XPS as a mapping tool has been hindered by the long acquisition times required.
Here we shall present the effects of increased x-ray performance, increased spectrometer sensitivity and modifications in data processing, i.e. both instrumental and software improvements, on the required acquisition time for XPS mapping. This is demonstrated using data from several samples, where multi-phase maps were acquired up to an order of magnitude more quickly than previously possible through implementation of these improvements.