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XPS chemical state analysis of sputter depth profiling measurements for annealed TiAl‐SiO 2 and TiAl‐W layer stacks
Author(s) -
Oswald Steffen,
Lattner Eric,
Seifert Marietta
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
surface and interface analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1096-9918
pISSN - 0142-2421
DOI - 10.1002/sia.6820
Subject(s) - x ray photoelectron spectroscopy , materials science , sputtering , alloy , chemical state , analytical chemistry (journal) , layer (electronics) , thermal stability , substrate (aquarium) , sputter deposition , thin film , metallurgy , chemical engineering , composite material , nanotechnology , chemistry , chromatography , engineering , oceanography , geology
For the application of surface acoustic wave sensors at high temperatures, both a high‐temperature stable piezoelectric substrate and a suitable metallization for the electrodes are needed. Our current attempt is to use TiAl thin films as metallization because this material is also known to be high temperature stable. In this study, Ti/Al multilayers and Ti‐Al alloy layers were prepared in combination with an SiO 2 cover layer or a W barrier layer at the interface to the substrate (thermally oxidized Si or Ca 3 TaGa 3 Si 2 O 14 ) as an oxidation protection. To form the high‐temperature stable γ‐TiAl phase and to test the thermal stability of the layer systems, thermal treatments were done in vacuum at several temperatures. We used X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) sputter depth‐profiling to investigate the film composition and oxidation behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate how the semiautomatic peak fitting can help to extract beside the elemental information also the chemical information from the measured depth profiles.