Effect of instrumental resolution on quantification in Auger electron spectroscopy measurements

Abstract

We have recently shown that with the commonly available resolution in AES measurements, significant errors can be incurred in the measured Auger-line intensities. To overcome this difficulty, a universal relation has been derived theoretically whereby the experimentally measured line intensities can easily be corrected so as to yield good estimates for the true intensities, those that would have been measured were the resolution infinitely good. In this paper we demonstrate the validity of our correlation procedure by measuring the Auger sensitivities of Si, Mg and Al with different resolutions. Whereas the as-measured sensitivity for each element varies appreciably as the resolution is changed, the corrected sensitivity remains constant to within 10–20%, independent of resolution. This procedure yields to a good approximation the true sensitivities and is therefore important not only for quantification but also for theoretical calculations of Auger yields.