Quantitative Auger Electron Spectroscopic Analysis of Hg1−x Cd x Te

Abstract

Auger electron spectroscopy of Hg1−xCdxTe has been investigated for quantitative analysis. HgCdTe is known to be a very sensitive material which easily suffers from ion beam and electron beam interactions. Two methods were compared for accurate and reproducible quantification of the chemical composition. The first strategy was to reduce as much as possible the damage caused by surface preparation and the effect of the incident electron beam on the material. Quantification was then achieved by use of relative sensitivity factors estimated by use of calibration reference samples. This method was rejected because of unavoidable beam damage which resulted in different chemical changes for the reference CdTe and the HgCdTe sample of interest. The second strategy was to precisely control the experimental conditions to ensure reproducible degradation. Quantification was achieved by analysis of reference HgCdTe samples with different Cd composition. Successful quantification was achieved on stoichiometric material of composition of 0.2 < XCd < 0.3 with a XCd discrimination limit of ΔXCd = 0.02 and an analysis step of 10 nm.