Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2016)
    Thin Films Tuesday Sessions
       Session TF-TuP

Paper TF-TuP28
The Importance of the Empirical Modeling of the Background Signal in XPS Data for Calculating the Composition of Transition Metal Compounds

Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 4:00 pm, Room Mauka

Session: Thin Films Poster Session
Presenter: Alberto Herrera-Gomez, CINVESTAV-Unidad Queretaro, Mexico
Correspondent: Click to Email
The increasing scope of transition metal compounds in nanofilm and nanoparticle technology invigorates the need for an accurate characterization of these materials with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). It is interesting to notice that, to the knowledge of the authors, there is not a single published report about the peak fitting of, e.g., metallic iron or metallic zinc. It was not but until recently that the first calculation, through XPS, of the composition of iron1 and cobalt2 oxides was reported . The scarcity of this type of reports is related to the analytical difficulty associated to fitting transition-metal photoemission peaks: they present a steeply rising background3 and a complex multiplet and satellite structure.4

In this paper we will describe the analysis tools required for modeling complex background and line-shapes appropriate for composition analysis from XPS data.

1 M.B. Sanchez, J.A. Huerta-ruelas, D. Cabrera-german, and A. Herrera-Gomez, (2016).

2 D. Cabrera-German, G. Gomez-Sosa, and A. Herrera-Gomez, Surf. Interface Anal. 48, 252 (2016).

3 G.C. Allen, M.T. Curtis, A.J. Hooper, and P.M. Tucker, J. Chem. Soc.{,} Dalt. Trans. 1525 (1974).

4 R.P. Gupta and S.K. Sen, Phys. Rev. B 10, 71 (1974).