A promising concept for using near-surface measuring angles in angle-resolved x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy considering elastic scattering effects

The increasing number of applications of very thin films requires both reliable thin-layer and interface characterization. A powerful method for characterization in the nanometer thickness range is the angle-resolved x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (ARXPS). This is a nondestructive depth-profiling method, which can provide elemental content as well as chemical information. Two of the drawbacks of ARXPS are, that it requires dedicated mathematical modeling and that, at least up until now, its use has been restricted away from near-surface angles. In this paper we present a method for the mathematical description of a few, hitherto unaccounted, measurement effects in order to improve the simulations of ARXPS data for complex surface structures. As an immediate application, we propose a simple algorithm to consider the effects of elastic scattering in the standard ARXPS data interpretation, which in principle would allow the use of the whole angular range for the analysis; thus leading to a significant increase in the usable information content from the measurements. The potential of this approach is demonstrated with model calculations for a few thin film examples. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3544002]