C₆₀⁺ ion etching rates of various widely-used polymers were measured by mesh-replica method. It was found that crystallinity of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephythalete (PET) affected the C₆₀⁺ ion etching rate of each polymer. It was found that surface mechanical properties, which might be affected by crystallinity, correlated with the C₆₀⁺ion etching rates.

  AES and XPS have been widely utilized for surface analysis of steel products, automobile parts, semiconductors, new materials, and so on. These products and materials have become microscopic in many years, and/therefore AES and XPS instruments have also been developed with the improvement of spatial resolution. In this article, the progress of AES and XPS instruments is reviewed mainly focused for spatial resolution and future directions is briefly discussed.

  Photoemission process leaves the target system in various final states that are lacking one electron with respect to the initial state. Except for the trivial noninteracting case, the final-state effects result in separate features in the photoemission electron spectra (PES). They are distinguished as the main feature and its satellites. Knowledge about those features for a given material is fundamentally important in understanding the electronic property of the material. We discuss the main and satellite features signaled in PES especially when the final states are reached by the local excitations, usually corresponding to the atoms, molecules, or strongly correlated electron solids like transition metal or rare earth metal compounds or several organic compounds. In particular, we focus on a few famous and prototypical PES problems of transition metal compounds (i.e., 3d-valence insulators, or sometimes narrow band 3d metals) and their understanding.