AES - ENERGY CALIBRATION OF ELECTRON SPECTROMETERS .2. RESULTS OF A BCR INTERLABORATORY COMPARISON CO-SPONSORED BY THE VAMAS SCA TWP

An interlaboratory assessment of the kinetic energy measurement of Auger electron peaks has been conducted using reference foils of copper, silver and gold. The results, involving data from spectrometers manufactured by seven companies, were received from 39 laboratories. The standard deviations of the data in both the direct and differentiated spectra were ∼60% of the values found in the ASTM‐sponsored round robin in 1982, indicating only marginal improvements in spectrometer calibration since that time. By comparing the copper M2,3VV and L3VV measurements from the sets of returned data with the reference values from Part I, the energy scale and energy zero errors were calibrated for each instrument. Using these values and the relativistic term for the particular spectrometer, corrections to the respondees' values for the Ag M4NN, Au N6,7VV and Au M5N6,7N6,7 peak energies could be determined. The scatters of these calibration‐corrected values were very low, amounting to ∼15% of the values in the ASTM round robin for all of the spectrometers tested, but reducing to only 6% for the high‐resolution spectrometers. For both the direct and differential modes the calibration‐corrected Au N6,7VV and Ag M4NN average peak positions diverged by less than the 0.07 eV standard deviations of their means from the reference values given in Part I. The copper reference values given in Part I thus appear to be suitable for calibrating AES instruments to an accuracy comparable to the measurement repeatabilities of the instruments concerned and seem to be quite sufficient for their overall energy calibration. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.