Various secondary particles are emitted when the surface of solid matter is irradiated with ions. This phenomenon has been utilized in several methods to analyze target materials. In analytical techniques, the method used to detect secondary ions is called “secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS).” In contrast, “secondary ion mass spectrometry with optical emission spectrometry (SIMS‐OES)” detects photons emitted from sputtered, excited atoms. Both SIMS and OES can characterize a sample surface and perform local elemental analysis of the surface, depth profiling of elements, and detection of any atom. SIMS with high sensitivity has mainly been developed for the impurity analyses of semiconductors. However, no research has been reported on applications using SIMS‐OES or a combination of SIMS and SIMS‐OES. In this study, we prove that atomic emission can be observed via ion irradiation. In addition, we show that the composition analysis is possible using the SIMS‐OES method. Herein, impurity and composition analyses were enabled by utilizing atomic emission. Moreover, we proved that an assessment with high‐depth direction resolution is feasible by etching the circumference of a crater in advance.

Structural, electronic, and thermoelectric properties of bridging OHb and terminal OHt groups adsorbed on stoichiometric SnO2 (110) surfaces have been investigated using density functional theory and semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory with effective core pseudopotential implemented in CRYSTAL17 program. Our results indicate that H and OH yield significant structural relaxation around the adsorption sites O2c and Sn5c. The results have shown that the absolute value of adsorption energy increases with decreasing the coverage from 1 to 1/4 monolayer. Mulliken charge analysis, band structures, and density of states were calculated and discussed. We found that H and OH adsorption increases the band gap energy from 2.81 eV for clean surfaces to 3.04, 2.95, and 2.89 eV with, respectively, 1, 1/2 and 1/4 monolayer surface coverages. Thermoelectric properties revealed that the presence of hydroxyl groups on the SnO2 (110) surfaces may enhance the Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, and electronic thermal conductivity.

This Insight Note follows a series of three previous insight notes on X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy image analysis that focused on the importance of analyzing the raw data, the use of summary statistics, and principal component analysis (PCA). The same X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy image data set was analyzed in all three notes. We now show an analysis of this same data set using multivariate curve resolution (MCR). MCR is a widely used exploratory data analysis method. Because of MCR's nonnegativity constraints, it has the important advantage of producing factors that look like real spectra. That is, both its scores and loadings are positive, so its results are often more interpretable than those from PCA. The requirements for preprocessing data are also, in general, lower for MCR compared with PCA. To help determine the number of factors that best describe the data set, a series of MCR models with different numbers of factors was created. Based on the chemical reasonableness of its factors, a two‐factor model was selected. Scores plots/images show the regions of the image that correspond to these two factors.

In our previous work, we find that the ethylene glycol (EG) is transferred to amorphous carbon or graphene during sliding under the effect of the tribochemical reactions; herein, in this work, we control the concentration of the modified Al2O3 nanoparticles in the EG solution in order to modulate the tribological properties of the tribosystem sliding in the mixed lubricant consisting of the modified Al2O3 nanoparticles and EG. The tribological tests show that the concentrations of the modified Al2O3 nanoparticles ranging from 0 to 1.0 wt% in the mixed lubricant are helpful for obtaining low wear rate due to the formation of graphene‐like materials induced by tribochemical reactions. On the other hand, when the concentration reaches 1.5 wt.%, the tribosystem exhibits high coefficient of friction (COF) and wear rate, which is attributed to the formation of reunited groups consisting of the modified Al2O3 nanoparticles and graphene‐like materials. This investigation should give a positive guidance for the design of the mixed lubricant with excellent lubrication properties.

In this paper, we calculated the different forms of BaTiO3/BiCoO3 composite structure, predicting their visible light absorption performance based on the electronic structure using the first principles calculations. Firstly, six possible compounds that come from BaTiO3 and BiCoO3 were constructed. By calculating the different antiferromagnetic (AFM) structures of strip, columnar, and layered composite structures, it is found that the ground state of the composite structure changes to G‐type AFM structure from C‐type AFM structure of pure BiCoO3 under the influence of BaTiO3. Energy band calculations show that band gaps of three composite structures are smaller than those of pure BaTiO3 and pure BiCoO3. Furthermore, density of states analysis shows that the conduction band minimum (CBM) and valence band maximum (VBM) of three composite structures are mainly from the contribution of Co 3d and O 2p. For the characteristic that CBM and VBM of materials come from different atoms, it would reduce the recombination opportunities of electrons and holes and is conducive to the increase of photoelectric conversion efficiency under visible light irradiation. The calculation of optical properties shows that optical absorption coefficients of three composite structures are much larger than that of BaTiO3, especially the layered composite structure. There is a high absorption peak near 500 nm of the solar spectral irradiation maximum, which is significantly important to improve the optical energy conversion efficiency of the composite materials. The work provides an effective way for the application of wide band gap ferroelectric materials in ferroelectric photovoltaic.

In the present study, the effects of oxygen plasma treatment and subsequent 2 nm thin Al2O3 film deposition by atomic layer deposition on about 30 nm thick hexamethyldisilazane polymer layers are investigated by using a combination of spectroscopic and electrochemical analysis. The investigations focus on the microporosity of the corresponding films and their structural changes. Upon oxygen plasma treatment, the surface near region of the films is converted into SiOx, and the microporosity is increased. Atomic layer deposition of Al2O3 on the plasma oxidized films leads to the decrease of pore sizes and an effective sealing. A correlation between the film microporosity and the change of hydroxyl groups of the films with the adsorption of water was established by ellipsometric porosimetry and in situ Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Moreover, electrochemical analysis provided complementary information on the electrolyte up‐take in the differently conditioned thin films.

Surface sputtering and structural modifications induced in silicon dioxide thin films (SiO2/Si) deposited on silicon substrates and irradiated by swift (10–40 MeV) heavy Auq+ (q = +4, +6, +7, and +9) ions were investigated by grazing‐incidence X‐ray diffraction (GIXRD) spectroscopy, Rutherford backscattering (RBS) spectrometry and time‐of‐flight elastic recoil detection (ToF‐ERDA) technique. The GIXRD analysis of the as‐deposited and irradiated samples revealed increasing structural modifications of the SiO2 thin films under Auq+ ion impacts with increasing ion‐beam energy. The changes consisted of decreased grain sizes with increased strain accompanied by a phase transformation from crystalline to amorphous films. RBS analysis showed a decrease in the mean stoichiometric (O/Si) ratio from (2.2 ± 0.1) to (1.7 ± 0.1), due to preferential sputtering of oxygen, as the incident ion energy increased. The obtained RBS‐results were then completed by those of ToF‐ERDA analysis technique using a 40 MeV Au9+ heavy ion beam. The preferential sputtering yield ratios (YSi/YO) were determined experimentally both versus electronic stopping power and ion fluence. The obtained results were then compared to numerical values derived from the inelastic thermal spike (i‐TS) model, Sigmund's analytical formula and SRIM simulation code. A good agreement was observed between the measured preferential sputtering data and the i‐TS calculated values, when considering both nuclear elastic and electronic inelastic collision mechanisms. Besides, a close correlation is observed between the electronic stopping power dependent measured sputtering yields and the XRD peak intensity degradation per unit fluence. These observations suggest that the same mechanism of MeV heavy ion‐irradiation induced extended atomic disordering, occurs both in the case of structural modifications and surface sputtering. Finally, the obtained experimental results are discussed on the basis of the i‐TS model.

Primarily due to its inherent redox chemistry, ceria (CeO2) is of use in many diverse areas of research. However, there is a wealth of misinterpretation of the oxygen spectra when discussing the result of damage or reduction to the CeO2 lattice, especially with regard to a signal in this region attributed to oxygen vacancies. In this paper, it is shown that this peak cannot be due to vacancies and that a better understanding of the changes in stoichiometry of CeO2 is best viewed from that of the Ce(III) component when considered in tandem with the O 1s signal.

This Insight Note follows two previous Insight Notes on X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) image analysis that dealt with the importance of analyzing the raw data and the use of summary statistics. As a next step in the exploratory data analysis (EDA) of XPS images, we now show principal component analysis (PCA) of an XPS image. PCA is appropriate when the spectra in a data set are correlated to some degree and the noise in the spectra is unimportant. In these cases, PCA can significantly reduce the dimensionality and complexity of data sets. Preprocessing is an important part of many PCAs. Its usefulness is illustrated with a small, mock data set, where the potential pitfalls of not preprocessing are shown. PCAs of XPS image data that were not preprocessed and preprocessed by mean centering are illustrated. Scree plots, which are used to determine the number of abstract factors (principal components, PCs) that describe a data set, are shown. The spectra in our XPS image are quite noisy, which is consistent with the moderate, but still significant, amount of variance that is captured by the first two PCs in our PCA. With both preprocessing methods, the loadings on PC1 and PC2 are remarkably smooth. The loadings on the next six PCs also appear to contain some chemical information. Scores images generated using both no preprocessing and preprocessing by mean centering reveal many of the same general features in the data set that were found in our two previous Insight Notes.

The acid–base surface properties of vivianite crystals highly affect the adsorption capacity of vivianite for heavy metals and organic matters in aqueous solution. Therefore, the aim of the study was to innovatively explore and quantify the acid–base surface characterization of vivianite crystals in aqueous solution. It was found that the two surface active adsorption sites (≡POH and ≡FeOH) and five surface species thereof (i.e., ≡PO, ≡POH, ≡FeOH, ≡FeO−, and ≡FeOH2+) underwent surface reaction on vivianite crystals. Moreover, the active surface site and point of zero charge of vivianite crystals were 18 sites/nm2 and pH 5.9. Importantly, constant capacitance model was successfully employed to model the titration data, from which the distribution of surface species as function of pH and surface reaction constants were also accurately derived. The finding herein can be applied for plausible modeling molecular‐scale adsorption of the impurities on vivianite surface.