Characterization of Pd‐Ni‐Co alloy thin films by ED‐EPMA with application of the STRATAGEM software

Abstract

Ternary thin film alloys based on Pd, Ni and Co on silicon wafers have been characterized in order to determine elemental composition and thickness. A broad variety of alloy compositions was obtained on one and the same substrate by magnetron dc‐co‐sputter deposition. Energy‐dispersive electron probe X‐ray microanalysis of these ‘multi’ alloy composition samples is performed in a non‐destructive, precise and, if optimized, also in a time‐saving way. The local thickness of the layers under study was in between 50 nm and 250 nm. Pure element bulk materials have been employed as reference specimens. The results attained in this study are compared to those obtained by other analytical methods as Auger electron spectroscopy and X‐ray photo electron spectroscopy. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Measuring the Thickness of Metal Coatings: A Review of the Methods

“…In the last fifty years, many software programs were written to simulate EDS spectra [168]; many of them were written by researchers, and some were commercial: MAGIC [169,170], STRATAGEM [171][172][173], GMRFILM [148], Electron Flight Simulator [174,175], ThinFilmID [176], LayerProbe [176,177], pyPENELOPE [178,179], Win X-ray [180,181], MC X-ray [180,182], XFilms [183], CASINO [150,[184][185][186][187], CalcZAF [188,189] and DTSA-II [190][191][192]. Many of these softwares exploit the PENEPMA algorithm [179].…”

“…Exploiting STRATAGEM software, Kühn [172] was capable of obtaining both the elemental composition and thickness of the thin film ternary alloy, Pd-Ni-Co, co-deposited via magnetron sputtering on a silicon wafer by ED-EPMA in the range of 50 to 250 nm. The results were confirmed by AES and XPS measurement, for the composition, and by SEM imaging for the thickness.…”

Measuring the Thickness of Metal Films: A Selection Guide to the Most Suitable Technique

“…Both the absolute thickness [136,137] as well as the mass thickness [138][139][140][141] were taken into consideration for the quantification. In the last fifty years, many pieces of software were written to simulate EDS spectra [142]; many of them are written by researchers and some were commercial: MAGIC [143,144], STRATAGEM [145][146][147], GMRFILM [122], Electron Flight Simulator [148,149], ThinFilmID [150] and LayerProbe [150,151], pyPENELOPE [152,153], Win X-Ray [154,155] and MC X-Ray [154,156], XFilms [157], CASINO [124,[158][159][160][161], CalcZAF [162,163] and DTSA-II [164][165][166]. Many of these pieces of software exploit the PENEPMA algorithm [153].…”

“…On the other hand, the minimum detectable thickness (lower detection limit) is given by the combination of the X-ray energy characteristics of the elements in the sample and the properties of the detector and can be as low as a few monolayers or less [169]. STRATAGEM software Kühn [146] was capable of obtaining both the elemental composition and thickness of a thin film ternary alloy Pd-Ni-Co co-deposited via magnetron sputtering on a silicon wafer using ED-EPMA in the range of 50 to 250 nm. The results were confirmed by AES and XPS measurement, for the composition, and by SEM imaging for the thickness.…”

Measurement of Elemental Composition of FeNi and SiGe Thin Films by Electron Probe Microanalysis with Stratagem Software

“…It was demonstrated in the past that the electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) can be applied to determine accurately both elemental composition and thickness of thin films in a non-destructive manner [1][2][3] by using the dedicated software package for thin film analysis Stratagem [4]. A relative small number of film materials such as pure metallic films of platinum and nickel [1], binary alloys of Fe-Ni [2], and Pt-Ni-Co ternary alloy films [3] has been reported in literature as working successfully. Further, the software can be applied 'inversely', i.e.…”