AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Applied Surface Science Monday Sessions
       Session AS-MoA

Paper AS-MoA8
Charge Referencing Complex Organic Materials in XPS using Hexatriacontane

Monday, October 29, 2012, 4:20 pm, Room 20

Session: Quantitative Surface Chemical Analysis, Technique Development, and Data Interpretation - Part 2
Presenter: L. Lohstreter, Medtronic, Inc.
Correspondent: Click to Email
Excess charge build up on insulators can obscure interesting chemical shifts during XPS analysis. The common practice to correct for this is to charge reference the C1s peak of organic materials to 285 eV, the C-C, C-H bond that is ubiquitous due to atmospheric hydrocarbon contamination. However, for samples with complex organic chemistry, it is often the very information within the C1s envelope that is in question. Moreover, the peak can be convoluted with no distinct shoulders. This makes shifting the maximum of the peak to 285 eV a dubious process with little assurance that it will correlate to the true chemistry of an unknown sample. This work will show that even unknown, complex C1s envelopes can be accurately charge referenced with a combination of an application of hexatriacontane to the surface and spectral subtraction. Applications in model material characterization and plasma treated surfaces will be discussed.