Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) is an analytical technique sensitive to the surface of materials and providing elemental and chemical composition of conductive samples. The excellent spatial resolution and its quantification possibilities, even for light elements, make AES a commonly used technique to investigate surface and interfaces. TiN-like materials have a wide range of applications depending on their stoichiometry, but their composition is still complex (or at least not straightforward) to determine because of a strong overlapping of the Ti LMM with the N KLL Auger transitions. This quantification problem can be circumvented using computerised calculations as target factor analysis (TFA) to estimate the different nitrogen and titanium contributions in this peaks overlap. However, a more simple method, based on the study of Ti LMM and Ti LMV area ratio of pure TiN and TiC reference samples, is described in this paper and can be used to obtain the atomic composition of any titanium nitride based compound, whatever the complexity of the material. This method is an alternative to easily quantify TiN-like compounds by AES. As an illustration, a Ti(CxN1-x) based multilayer deposited on a hardmetal substrate was investigated. This quantification method was successfully used to evidence three different layers and the diffusion phenomenon at the interfaces between the layers. This study was completed with a quantitative SIMS depth pro. le that the high sensitivity and depth resolution allowed to measure the small variations of composition lower than the uncertainty of AES. (C) 2009 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.