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Refined Calculations of Effective Attenuation Lengths for SiO2 Film Thicknesses by X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy

Published

Author(s)

Cedric J. Powell, W S. Werner, W Smekal

Abstract

We report electron effective attenuation lengths (EALs) for SiO2 films on Si that were obtained from Monte Carlo simulations of substrate Si 2p3/2 photoelectron transport for X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with Al and Mg Ka X-rays and SiO2 films of varying thickness. These EALs show a stronger dependence on SiO2 thickness than previous values found from an approximate algorithm. Since recent XPS data for SiO2 can be analyzed satisfactorily with thickness-independent EALs, our results indicate that intrinsic excitations and/or variations of inelastic-scattering probabilities near surfaces and interfaces appear to be significant in quantitative XPS.
Citation
Applied Physics Letters

Keywords

attenuation lengths, electron attenuation lengths, film thickness, silicon dioxide, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy

Citation

Powell, C. , Werner, W. and Smekal, W. (2008), Refined Calculations of Effective Attenuation Lengths for SiO<sub>2</sub> Film Thicknesses by X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, Applied Physics Letters (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created October 16, 2008