Invited Paper AS-ThM5
ASSD 30th Anniversary Lecture: Evolution of the Nature and Application of Surface Analysis: Challenges, Pitfalls, and Opportunities Past, Present and Future

Thursday, October 22, 2015, 9:20 am, Room 212D

Over the past 30 years there has been a remarkable range of advances in the ability to understand the nature of many types of important surfaces and interfaces. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) has become nearly essential for characterizing many types of materials, verifying the quality of synthesis methods and understanding interactions of these materials in many environments and applications. This has become possible because of major improvements in instrumentation including stability, reproducibility, increases in spatial resolution, increases in count rate, major improvements in the ability to analyze insulating samples, digital control of instruments and advances in the ability to process, model and analyze the data. For Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) similar advances have occurred, with spatial resolution being an obvious differentiator. In the area of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, the major excitement has been related to the evolution of new primary and sputter beams with Bucky ball and cluster sources. Thirty years ago scanning probe methods were just beginning to appear; now they serve as critical tools for many types of studies.

In spite of the significant progress, many important materials information needs remain, providing opportunities for continued evolution of traditional surface analysis tools and the development and applications of other methods. These might be framed in the context of some “what if” questions that are not out of the range of the possible. What if we could monitor in real-time the evolution of surfaces and buried interfaces (and the actual compositional and chemical information at those interfaces) in “operational” environments? What if we could obtain quantitative compositional and chemical information at the resolution of an AFM? What if micro-technology could be used to create an XPS unit that produced quality data and operated without or with only trivial need for vacuum? What would be possible if NMR could be easily used to quantitatively characterize surfaces, interfaces or individual particles? Examples of progress along these directions will be described. All indications are that the next 30 years will be as dynamic and productive as the past 30 years, if not more so.