Probing buried layers by photoelectron spectromicroscopy with hard x-ray excitation

We report about a proof-of-principle experiment which explores the perspectives of performing hard x-ray photoemission spectromicroscopy with high lateral resolution. Our results obtained with an energy-filtered photoemission microscope at the PETRA III storage ring facility using hard x-ray excitation up to 6.5 keV photon energy demonstrate that it is possible to obtain selected-area x-ray photoemission spectra from regions less than 500 nm in diameter. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4722940]