Quantitative composition‐depth profiles of thin films

Abstract

A technique utilizing a layer by layer analysis has been developed for obtaining the composition-depth profiles of thin films from Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) combined with ion sputtering. The technique, which has monolayer resolution and gives significantly more accurate results than prior methods, has been used for analyzing the composition of the native oxide on a series of iron-chromium alloys. The new results differ significantly from those that do not consider layer by layer variations in composition, and they are in good agreement with those obtained some years ago by ion-scattering spectrometry (ISS). In addition, it was confirmed that no preferential sputtering of Fe or Cr occuni during argon ion sputtering of the alloys.

Quantitative AES depth profiling of iron and chromium oxides in solid solution, (Cr1−xFex)2O3

“…The successful use of these two techniques has been demonstrated readily for several different systems. 6,7,11 These are common features in commercial evaluation software such as the PHI Multipak 6.0 used in this study.…”

A new index to estimate the corrosion resistance of aluminium‐containing steel

“…[96][97][98] A typical passive oxide film formed on stainless steels consists of multiple layer structures [94,[98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107] , even though its thickness is in the range of 1-5 nm. [92,108,109] Hydroxide is generally located in the outermost parts of the film in contact with the electrolyte, and the protective oxide sits at the inner part of the oxide film; this protective oxide is in contact with the substrate metal. [94] The actual composition and it's thickness depend on the chemical composition of the steel, electrolyte, pH and applied potential.…”

Ferrous analysis

“…Another review describes the characterization of stainless steel films by Auger electron spectroscopy, SIMS, and GDS with regard to the nature and relative weight of segregated elements in the films (543). Layer-by-layer analysis of native films on iron-chromium alloy has been used to demonstrate the effectiveness of Auger electron spectroscopy combined with ion sputtering in providing more accurate measurements of the composition and depth profile (122). AES has also been used for a study of the distribution of elements in the surface layer of a steel that had been laseralloyed with chromium (196), the segregation of certain elements in grain boundaries (106), and for the characterization of surface films formed on diffusion welded interfaces of both iron and stainless steel (369).…”