Abstract

An Auger electron spectrometer for studies of solid surfaces which is considerably more sensitive than currently used instruments has been developed. The greatly improved signal-to-noise ratio of the spectrometer made it possible to display the 0–1000 eV Auger spectrum on an oscilloscope at a scanning rate of 20 000 V/sec. Alternatively, the scanning rate may be reduced to that typical of present instruments (∼2 V/sec) and the primary beam current reduced from 5 × 10−5 to 10−8 A.