Extraction of depth distributions of electron-excited Auger electrons in Fe, Ni and Si using inelastic peak shape analysis

We have studied the electron-excited Anger peak shape dependency on the primary energy for polycrystalline Fe, Ni and Si and have succeeded in extracting information about the excitation depth distribution. AES with different incident primary energies up to 4.0 keV, XAES and the corresponding REELS were measured. For the inelastic background analysis we approximated the type of distribution function f(x) of emitters to be rectangular. Using the inelastic scattering cross section from REELS, the analysis separated the spectra into the intrinsic Anger spectra and the inelastic peak backgrounds corresponding to f(x). The extracted characteristic depths of excitation for Anger electrons were found to increase monotonically with primary energy and were compared to IMFPs and the transport mean foe paths for elastic scattering.