Quantitative determination of atomic concentrations by auger electron spectroscopy

A simple mathematical analysis presented here shows that unless the ratio of the instrumental resolution width to the natural llinewidth of each Auger line is less than about 0.3, the measured peak-to-peak amplitudes of the differentiated Auger signals do not represent accurately the atomic concentrations. At the same time, the analysis provides the means for overcoming this difficulty even when the linewidth ratio is considerably larger than 0.3. A universal relation is presented whereby the experimentally measured peak-to-peak amplitudes can be corrected so as to enable one to derive quite accurately the relative atomic concentrations in one's samples; so much so, provided reliable Auger sensitivities of the elements are available. Unfortunately, however, most of the sensitivity data, especially for the high energy Auger lines, were measured with insufficient resolution. In fact, we show that at least in some cases the published data were measured with a resolution far from satisfactory. It is our contention, therefore, that there is a need for a revision of the sensitivity data with the required resolution if they are to be used for quantification.