New Directions in Auger Microanalysis

Abstract

Scanning Auger microscopy is a developing field which has by no means reached its limits either in instrumentation or methodology. Two areas of progress in the microanalysis of materials are the quantification of micro-area spectra and the collection and analysis of Auger images. For microanalysis, some strategies for the quantification of spectra depend on determining the shape of the secondary electron background. Developments in the method of linearized secondary-electron cascades give promise to achieving this. Analyses of materials by multispectral Auger imaging show that it is possible to give a meaningful and quantifiable representation of the inhomogeneities across a surface in the form of color-coded statistically significant images.