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Composition of oxides and nitrides from line shapes of metal core level x‐ray photoelectron spectra
Author(s) -
Galán L.,
Prieto P.,
Morant C.,
Soriano L.,
Sanz J. M.,
Elizalde E.,
Rueda F.
Publication year - 1992
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.740190140
Subject(s) - x ray photoelectron spectroscopy , chemical composition , spectral line , metal , stoichiometry , nitride , composition (language) , chemistry , ordination , analytical chemistry (journal) , line (geometry) , photoelectric effect , materials science , physics , geometry , mathematics , nuclear magnetic resonance , linguistics , philosophy , statistics , organic chemistry , layer (electronics) , astronomy , chromatography , optoelectronics
A method is proposed which evaluates the averaged composition of a sample in terms of the centroid of the core level XP spectrum. The method is based on the basic principle of electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis, i.e. the additive property of the chemical shifts and their proportionality to the ligand co‐ordination. It allows one to calculate the averaged composition of compounds if the line shapes of spectra corresponding to stoichiometric samples (including the pure metal) are known and a few simple conditions are assumed. The main advantage of this method is that the composition can be obtained even if the individual contributions of the different oxidation states cannot be resolved or deconvoluted, so that no previous knowledge of the oxidation states or co‐ordination structure is necessary. This method of calculating the composition is illustrated by its application to ZrO x , HfO x , NbN x , TaN x O y and SiN x O y obtained by different methods. The results are then compared with those obtained from the usual XPS quantitative analysis, so that further insight to the sample near‐surface structure and composition can be gained by this combined study.