The spectral background in electron excited Auger electron spectroscopy

Abstract

Abstract The power law form of the secondary electron cascade from electron bombarded solids first suggested by Sickafus is explored both theoretically and experimentally. Backgrounds of the form AE − m are shown to result from a range of different theoretical models of the electron‐solid interaction in which generation of fast secondaries by electron Compton scattering and transport to the surface are treated separately. The precise value of the exponent m is seen to depend upon the balance between elastic scattering strength and the energy dependence of the inelastic mean free path. The experimental results for eight different samples with atomic numbers between 6 and 78 are reported. The constant A appears to be related to the number density of valence band electrons. The values of m fall within the range predicted by the theoretical arguments. The generality of the form AE − m to many materials is useful for the estimation of both the Auger back‐scattering co‐efficient and the energy dependence of the inelastic mean free path from measurement of the parameters A and m .