Chemical State Mapping and Depth Profiling in a Scanning Auger Microprobe

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2010 in Portland, Oregon, USA, August 1 – August 5, 2010.

Influence of Substrates on the Crystal Structure of Pulsed Laser Deposited Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3–29% PbTiO3 Thin Films

Lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate [Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PMN)–PbTiO3 (PT)] films were synthesized using pulsed laser deposition, and the effect of substrates on the deposition behavior of the PMN–PT film was investigated. Phase evolution of PMN–PT thin films was found to depend significantly on the type of the substrate used during deposition. Though a mixture of pyrochlore and perovskite was observed when films were deposited on a Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si substrate, the oxide substrates, such as (Ba0.5Sr0.5)RuO3/Si, SrTiO3, and LaAlO3, enabled the deposition of pure perovskite. Scanning Auger microprobe, transmission electron microscope, and x-ray diffraction analysis showed that an interfacial layer between the substrates and the oxide film was central to the phase evolution behavior. On the Pt/TiO2/SiO2/Si substrate, an interfacial layer of lead–platinum (Pb–Pt) played a major role in the formation of the pyrochlore phase. However, on oxide substrates, there was no interfacial layer and interdiffusion of A-site cations was observed between the PMN film and the oxide electrodes.

Why Pressure Scales Cause So Much Confusion

Pressure scales can be extremely confusing to new operators. This is not surprising. To my mind, there are three primary areas of confusion.Firstly, the pressure of gas inside an instrument changes over many orders of magnitude during pump-down. The change is about 9 orders of magnitude for a traditional Scanning Electron Microscope and about 13 orders of magnitude for an ultra-high vacuum instrument such as a Scanning Auger Microprobe.

Reflection Extended Electron Energy Loss Fine Structure (REXEELFS) Study Of Damage Induced By Ar+ on Hopg (0001) Surface.

In recent years much attention has been paid in development of EXEELFS (EXELFS, EELFS) technique .Some people around the world focused their work in characterizing materials in both, reflection and transmission geometries [ 1-2]. These studies show that EXEELFS technique is a reliable way to obtain the local structure of these materials. Some authors have been done experiments to detect structural changes on the surfaces (epitaxial grown, small clusters grown, surface reconstruction, etc, ). In this paper we have done a systematical observation of the possible damage induced by the Ar+ ions on HOPG surface at different sputterin timesExperiments were taken at room temperature in a commercial UHV chamber for surface analysis, with a base pressure of 2.5 x 10-10 Torr. A PERKIN ELMER PHI-595 scanning Auger microprobe with single pass Cylindrical Mirror Analyzer. (CMA), and coaxial election gun which can operate from 1 KeV to 10 K eV, equipped with Ar ion gun system for cleaning surfaces was used.