Effects of Electron Backscattering in Auger Electron Spectroscopy: Recent Developments

Abstract

  There is currently increasing interest in a more complete theoretical description of the signal intensity in Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). We report calculations of backscattering factors (BFs) for three selected Auger transitions (Al KL₂₃L₂₃, Pd M₅N₄₅N₄₅, and Pt M₅N₆₇N₆₇) in the corresponding elemental solids using two algorithms. With algorithm A, BF values were obtained with a Monte Carlo calculation in which individual inelastic-scattering events were simulated. With the more approximate, but faster algorithm B, BFs were calculated using the continuous slowing-down approximation and stopping powers from a recently developed predictive formula. For primary-beam energies between 3 keV and 20 keV, differences in BFs from the two algorithms ranged between 1.3 % and 9 % for the three Auger transitions. These differences arose mainly from limitations of the predictive formula for the stopping power with algorithm B. Nevertheless, the differences are believed to be sufficiently small to enable use of the faster algorithm B for many applications in quantitative AES.