Abstract
The electron spectra of 27 elemental solids and the 12 compounds measured with the specially designed type CMA were analyzed to interpret the energy distribution of secondary electrons which are emitted through a cascade process due to the excitation of primary electrons. As a result, we found that there are three components in the secondary electron spectra under several tens of eV. The first component is the individual excitation by the primary electron, the second component is the excitation by the Auger electron at several 10 eV, and the third component is the other fine structures caused by the decay of plasmons and other excitations. Assuming all structures depend on the exponential power (E-γ), the intensities of these components of the N(E) spectrum are calculated.
For the elemental solids and the compounds, the intensity of the individual excitation by the primary electrons is positively correlated with the number of the outermost shell electrons in the case of the acceleration voltage between 200 and 5000 V. The intensity of secondary electrons excited by the Auger electrons is positively correlated with the number of the valence electrons in the valence band. On the other hand, the intensity of the other fine structure has no clear relationship with the number of the valence electrons. Furthermore, the dependence for the intensities of the individual excitation on the atomic number is almost the same for the elemental solids and their compounds. The relationship between the intensity of the fine structure with the atomic number is not the same for elemental solids and their compounds.
