Applied Surface Science, Vol.434, 982-994, 2018
Multi-component quantitation of meso/nanostructural surfaces and its application to local chemical compositions of copper meso/nanostructures self-organized on silica
Knowledge about the chemical compositions of meso/nanomaterials is fundamental to development of their applications in advanced technologies. Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) is an effective analysis method for the characterization of meso/nanomaterial structures. Although a few studies have reported the use of AES for the analysis of the local composition of these structures, none have explored in detail the validity of the meso/nanoanalysis results generated by the AES instrument. This paper addresses the limitations of AES and the corrections necessary to offset them for this otherwise powerful meso/nanoanalysis tool. The results of corrections made to the AES multi-point analysis of high-density copper-based meso/nanostructures provides major insights into their local chemical compositions and technological prospects, which the primitive composition output of the AES instrument failed to provide. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Auger analysis;Meso/nanomaterial analysis;Peak overlap;Electron-induced reduction;Nano-grained heterogeneous catalyst;Field sensor