Formation of inelastic scattered background photoelectrons, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy from multilayer inhomogeneous surface

Abstract

In this work, a new method of background subtraction in XPS is suggested considering multiple inelastic scattering in a multilayer inhomogeneous target. The method is based on solution of the problem of multiple inelastic photoelectron scattering in a multilayer plane-parallel target. For a overlayer/substrate system, formulae for subtraction of background generated by multiple inelastic photoelectron scattering are found. It is shown that backgroundы of a spectral line of photoelectrons emitted from the overlayer and emitted from the substrate and inelastically scattered in the overlayer differ significantly.