This special issue focuses on practical surface analysis. Contribution includes its recent advances, new techniques that have been put into commercial, and unique combinations of these techniques. It may provide some new insights for research in the broad field of surface and vacuum science.

Hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) is a powerful technique to observe chemical and electronic states of atoms buried inside materials. Recently, a laboratory-based HAXPES system with high throughput has been developed, combining a high-flux Ga (Kα＝9.25 keV) X-ray source and a high-transmission photoelectron analyser. In this article, research using the HAXPES Lab is reviewed, and the data are compared with those using synchrotron light sources. The HAXPES Lab is an attractive option not only for scientists but also for industrialists needing rapid answers for research and development.

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is one of the most useful and powerful techniques for surface analysis of solid materials. In recent years, to meet growing research demands for materials characterization, XPS instrumentation and application technology have been developing. In this article, a brief introduction of XPS along with an overview of recent trends in application of the technique are provided.

Multi-technique XPS (x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) system is a trend for current surface analysis field. Not only delivering the information of chemical state composition, with options of ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), low-energy inverse photoelectron spectroscopy (LEIPS) and reflection electron energy loss spectroscopy (REELS), it delivers the electrical properties of the solid surface. Moreover, XPS equipped with a sputter ion source further enables us to explore the chemical information from underneath the surface. In this article, the multi-technique XPS system and its application on organic and inorganic materials are demonstrated. In particular, the combination of UPS/LEIPS and argon gas cluster ion beam (Ar-GCIB) shows the capability of energy diagram analysis in depth on organic materials. And, the bandgaps of inorganic materials obtained by UPS/LEIPS and REELS correlate well. Hence, using combination techniques, multi-techniques XPS system provides highly reliable evaluation method to determine the bandgaps for inorganic materials.

A unique Soft X-ray Emission Spectrometer (SXES) has been developed. This spectrometer can analyse the emission spectrum of the soft X-ray region, based on the electron transition near the valence band, which is sensitive to the chemical bonding state of the material. Also, this spectrometer can detect X-rays in the ultra-soft X-ray region from 50 eV to 2.3 keV with parallel signal detection by using varied line spacing (VLS) gratings.

In this paper, we will introduce some typical application examples of the analysis of high temperature corrosion of Ni based alloy surface and the polymer analysis.

This review article presents the principles of atom probe tomography (APT) and its development history with the latest practical applications. Recently, the technique of APT has dramatically changed. Especially, a combination of focused ion beam (FIB) and scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) techniques with APT allows us to measure small areas of samples such as a specific dislocation of GaN by APT. This makes a great improvement in the failure analysis techniques on electric devices. On the other hand, the development of vacuum and cryo transfer module (VCTM) on APT leads the application of APT to a broader range of elements and/or materials such as hydrogen analysis and biological samples, respectively. We also describe the future developments of APT.

The mechanical and electronic properties of ferrocene-bridged trisporphyrin, which consists of three porphyrin units bridged via a ferrocene (Fc) moiety, and adsorbed onto Au(111) by a pulse injection method, were investigated using low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS). The electronic states originating from the ferrocene group were clearly observed by bias voltage dependent STM images, as well as by STS. Sequential submolecular resolution STM images and conformational analyses using a simple molecular model revealed that the ferrocene moiety acts as a molecular ball bearing.