Abstract
In the first step of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, photoelectron peaks in a survey spectrum for the specimen of interest are generally identified as arising from particular elements and electron energy levels. This peak identification is performed using sophisticated software on commercial XPS instruments. For the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS)/Technical Working Area (TWA) 2/A 9 project, automated peak-identification efficiency using commercial software utilities has been investigated with simulated test XPS spectra. This efficiency has been investigated with reference peaks that were detected by eye in our previous work [SIA, 2008, 40, 1337]. We found (i) one software that identified the binding energy (BE) at the peak maximum for a fitted curve in the peak region, a second that reported the BE stored in its database, and a third that reported the BE as the local maximum, (ii) software does not identify some weak peaks even though they were obviously detected by analysts, (iii) only one major peak of a doublet appeared to be in software database when the energy separation is less than about 4 eV such as 3.6 eV for Au 4f, and (iv) the identification efficiency is larger than 90% when the ratio between peak height and noise amplitude is greater than 10. We suggest several things for improving software design to assist non-expert analysts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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