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Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards interlaboratory study on intensity calibration for x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy instruments using low-density polyethylene
Reed, Benjamen Cant, David Spencer, Steve Carmona-Carmona, Abraham Bushell, Adam Herrera-Gomez, Alberto Kurokawa, Akira Thissen, Andreas Thomas, Andrew Britton, Andrew
Reed, Benjamen
Cant, David
Spencer, Steve
Carmona-Carmona, Abraham
Bushell, Adam
Herrera-Gomez, Alberto
Kurokawa, Akira
Thissen, Andreas
Thomas, Andrew
Britton, Andrew
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2020-11-23
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Abstract
We report the results of a Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards interlaboratory study on the intensity scale calibration
of x-ray photoelectron spectrometers using low-density polyethylene (LDPE) as an alternative material to gold, silver, and copper. An improved
set of LDPE reference spectra, corrected for different instrument geometries using a quartz-monochromated Al Kα x-ray source, was developed
using data provided by participants in this study. Using these new reference spectra, a transmission function was calculated for each dataset
that participants provided. When compared to a similar calibration procedure using the NPL reference spectra for gold, the LDPE intensity calibration method achieves an absolute offset of ∼3.0% and a systematic deviation of ±6.5% on average across all participants. For spectra
recorded at high pass energies (≥90 eV), values of absolute offset and systematic deviation are ∼5.8% and ±5.7%, respectively, whereas for
spectra collected at lower pass energies (<90 eV), values of absolute offset and systematic deviation are ∼4.9% and ±8.8%, respectively; low pass
energy spectra perform worse than the global average, in terms of systematic deviations, due to diminished count rates and signal-to-noise
ratio. Differences in absolute offset are attributed to the surface roughness of the LDPE induced by sample preparation. We further assess the
usability of LDPE as a secondary reference material and comment on its performance in the presence of issues such as variable dark noise,
x-ray warm up times, inaccuracy at low count rates, and underlying spectrometer problems. In response to participant feedback and the results
of the study, we provide an updated LDPE intensity calibration protocol to address the issues highlighted in the interlaboratory study. We also
comment on the lack of implementation of a consistent and traceable intensity calibration method across the community of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) users and, therefore, propose a route to achieving this with the assistance of instrument manufacturers, metrology
laboratories, and experts leading to an international standard for XPS intensity scale calibration.
Citation
Reed, B., Cant, D., Spencer, S., Carmona-Carmona, A., Bushell, A. ... Shard, A. (2020). Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards interlaboratory study on intensity calibration for x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy instruments using low-density polyethylene. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 38(6), article-number 063208. https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0000577
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American Vacuum Society
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Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A
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The following article appeared in Reed, B., Cant, D., Spencer, S., Carmona-Carmona, A., Bushell, A. ... Shard, A. (2020). Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards interlaboratory study on intensity calibration for x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy instruments using low-density polyethylene. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A, 38, 063208 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0000577. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing.