Correction of the Instrumental Factor in Quantitative Analysis of Auger Electron Spectroscopy

Abstract

This report is the result of a joint experiment on the quantitative analysis in Auger electron spectroscopy. The Auger intensity ratios of a high energy to a low energy for Al, Ni and Au varied by a factor of 2-3 among instruments, and as these ratios did not show a linear behavior with electron energy it was difficult to provide a universal expression for this behavior. Also, the variation of these ratios by the movement of an electron beam or the misplacement of a sample was not large enough to prove the spread among instruments. On the other hand, the voltage supply to a sample had a large influence on the low energy Auger intensity, and it was possible to reduce the spread of the data among instruments by selecting suitable voltages. But we could not obtain good results in the application of this method to the Fe-B-P alloy measurements.
Next, we discussed the method for correcting Auger peak intensity by utilizing the background intensity obtained from N(E) spectrum, and it was clarified that this method was effective for reducing the spread of the data among instruments and measuring conditions. We could obtain good results in the Fe-B-P alloy measurements by this method.