Anomalous Auger intensities for nitrogen explained
- McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario (Canada)
The nitrogen KLL Auger electron intensities from a series of nine interstital nitride films from the Group 4, 5 and 6 elements Ti, V, Cr, Zr, Nb, Mo, Hf, Ta and W, prepared by high temperature reaction with ammonia gas, were found to vary periodically in a manner which could not be interpreted by the usual matrix effects of primary beam back-scattering and inelastic mean free path. In addition to these unexpected trends observed for all nine elements, the extreme members, Ti and W, showed unreasonably anomalous high and low intensities respectively. It is the purpose of this paper to account for these large anomalies. The chemisorption of ground and excited state ammonia on the three low index planes of single crystal tungsten has been investigated. In all cases the extremely low nitrogen KLL Auger electron intensities were no longer observed. The unexpectedly low value previously observed for nitride thin films arises from surface roughness, induced by nucleation and growth of micron-sized nitride particles. Auger electron spectroscopy of nitrogen in titanium is complicated by the total overlap of the nitrogen KLL and titanium LMM peaks at 384 eV. This laboratory has made extensive studies of the titanium-nitrogen system offering a solution to the overlap problem that has become widely accepted as an effective method for nitrogen surface analysis by AES. The procedure involves the assumption that the relative intensity of the 384 and 420 eV Ti peaks does not change on nitriding, and using the observable intensity of the 420 eV peak in the nitride to subtract the Ti contribution from the combined peak at 384 eV. However, the success of this analysis procedure does not require that the relative intensity of the Ti peaks is independent of nitrogen concentration, only that if it varies, it does so linearly. Applying these results to titanium removes the gross anomaly previously reported.
- OSTI ID:
- 258303
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-9506225-; TRN: 96:001884-0004
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Surface analysis `95, University Park, PA (United States), 7-9 Jun 1995; Other Information: PBD: 1995; Related Information: Is Part Of Surface analysis `95. Final program; PB: 86 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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