Recent developments on an improved retarding-field analyser

Abstract

A compact electrostatic energy analyser is presented. Its main characteristics are an electrically adjustable resolving power with Delta E/E ranging from 1.5 to 0.1%, a high sensitivity provided by an incident solid angle of 12.5% of 2 pi , a large source area (up to 4 mm in diameter) and a large working distance (25 mm). The high sensitivity allows measurements to be made at very low primary beam intensities (down to 1 pA) and makes this analyser very suitable for scanning Auger microscopy. The defocusing of the low-intensity primary beam drastically reduces the electron bombardment of the sample and permits the study of electron-induced phenomena on the surface. The good resolving power makes this analyser suitable for X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.