Surface structure and chemistry are crucial to the successful production and operation of innumerable devices, materials and coatings. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, with its high surface specificity and chemical state sensitivity, is an ideal tool for the evaluation of material composition. XPS depth profiling allows the identification of chemical variations in materials from the surface to bulk, and facilitates characterisation of complex layer structures. Recent advances in ion source design have seen the introduction of noble gas cluster ion beams for depth profiling applications, which allow materials that are unstable under monatomic ion bombardment to be analysed.

 

Solutions to structural and chemical problems using the full range of state-of-the-art, fully integrated X-ray photoelectron spectrometers from Thermo Fisher Scientific are presented. These include the characterisation of thin film polymer coatings, and determination of the structure of multilayer stacks. The effectiveness of the analyses, and the automated data refinement processes using new features of the award-winning Avantage datasystem, are shown for each of these examples.