AVS 46th International Symposium
    Applied Surface Science Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session AS-WeA

Invited Paper AS-WeA1
The Pleasure and Pain of Working with Insulators

Wednesday, October 27, 1999, 2:00 pm, Room 6A

Session: Oxides and Insulators
Presenter: D.R. Baer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Authors: D.R. Baer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
S.A. Chambers, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
G.C. Dunham, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
M.H. Engelhard, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
S.A. Joyce, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
A.S. Lea, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
T.M. Orlando, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
The detailed understanding of the surface properties of insulating materials is considerably less well developed then that for metals and semiconductors. Some of the reasons for this include the difficulty in getting clean well defined surfaces, the fact that many analysis methods use beams that damage the materials and complications in data collection and analysis due to charge buildup on the samples. The good news is that these materials are very interesting, they are technologically and environmentally important and not as many people are examining them as other materials. Even for analysis of "real" materials and solving applied problems, understanding damage processes, having relevant "reference" spectra, and appropriately dealing with charging effects can mean the difference between success or failure. This presentation will describe some of our research interests involving insulating materials along with a selection of the problems (some with solutions) we have encountered. The presentation will give some examples of deliberate and unintentional beam damage, consequences of heating surfaces, creating and observing defects, methods to prepare "good" and "bad" surfaces, handling charging on difficult materials, and consequences of ion depth profiling. Materials to be discussed will include oxidized forms of Ti, Fe, Pb, Al, and Mg. Examples will include uses of AES, XPS, MBE, and SPM. This work is supported by the Division of Geosciences, Office of Science, U. S. Department of Energy and most of the research performed at the W. R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.