Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : The Auger valence peak of Al2O3, Al and carbon compounds (graphite, fullerene, carbides) has been studied experimentally and theoretically. It is demonstrated, from a comparison of the experimental spectrum with the self-convolution of the valence band, that the Al CVV transition in Al2O3 is an intra-atomic transition. The behaviour of the C KVV Auger peak is shown to be intermediate between atomic and band-like transitions. The different experimental carbide peaks could be reconstructed by a self-convolution of the valence band and the introduction of a hole-hole repulsion term extracted from the Cini-Sawatzki equation. A non-expected behaviour of the satellite peak at 280 eV for tungsten and chromium carbide is shown and interpreted, with a comparison with the Ramaker approach. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.