ULTRA THIN FILM ANALYSIS USING THERMO VG SCIENTIFICS THETAPROBE INSTRUMENT

摘要

As can be seen from the above discussion, ARXPS is a technique which can provide information about near-surface layers to a depth of about 10 nm. As with conventional XPS, it also provides chemical state information. ARXPS can therefore provides information which is not available using other methods. Much of this falls into the category of non-destructive depth profiling. When chemical state information is needed sputtering should not be used because the required information may be destroyed. ARXPS allows measurements to be made on buried interfaces without the need to sputter the sample. For quantitative information from near surface features sputtering cannot be used. This is because there is a transient region of a few nanometers at the start of the sputtering process within which quantitative data is unreliable. Atomic mixing causes depth resolution from sputtering methods to be insufficient unless very low energy ions are used. Techniques such as ellipsometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry are capable of providing film thickness information but they are incapable of providing chemical state information. Indeed, using these methods it is essential to know the composition of the films before their thickness can be determined. In the past ARXPS has not been used extensively because of the difficulty of performing the experiments. Now, using Theta Probe, most of the practical difficulties have been j removed and ARXPS becomes viable as a routine analytical tool.