Surface chemistry and microstructure analysis of novel technological materials

摘要

More and more, our understadning of surface structure and chemical composition is becoming fundamental in materials development. The purpose of this review is to present different surface analysis techniques that can help researchers to increase their understanding of the surface microstructure or nanostructure. Three analytical methods will be discussed: Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscpy (XPS) and Secondary Ions Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS). Some of the physical principles behined these techniques will be briefly described together with their advantages, the detection limits and also some possible related artifacts. The main objective of this paper is to show the importance of our understanding of the surface structure and chemistry in the development of technologically important materials. The different sections will present a number of materials development programs and hopefully will illustrate the significance of the information obtained using these surface analytical tools.