• Citer

Study of the chemical bonding in tungsten carbide and chromium films by application of factor analysis on AES depth profiles

par Reniers, François ;Roose, N.;Silberberg, Eric ;Vereecken, Jean
Référence Applied surface science, 99, page (379-392)
Publication Publié, 1996

Article révisé par les pairs

• Accès en ligne
• Détails
• Contenu
• Statistiques

Résumé :

Factor analysis was used to deconvolve Auger spectra of tungsten carbides and chromium samples recorded during depth profiles of model samples. The various chemical states of the elements were clearly identified by this method. The different phases of tungsten carbides (α-WC, α-W2C, β-WC1 - x.) as well as the different oxidation states of chromium (Cr, Cr2O3, CrxOy) were separated. As the structure of these samples was well characterized by other techniques, the reliability of the factor analysis method could be examined by investigating the parameters which can influence the results of factor analysis. For both systems, the effect of the mathematical pretreatment of the spectra, like smoothing and differentiation on the number of factors detected was examined. For the tungsten carbide samples, the effect of the Ar+ ion energy on the number of primary factors was also examined. In the chromium part of the study, the influence of the selected energy windows on the detected number of factors was studied. It has been shown that when taking care of the measuring conditions and the manipulation of the data, factor analysis offers great possibilities to study the chemical composition of samples.