Composition of Ni-Ta-C thick films using simulated annealing analysis of elastic backscattering spectrometry data

Simulated annealing has been used successfully on elastic backscattering spectrometry data collected from tribological films of NiTaxCy on Si substrates, Manual analysis of the data was possible assuming that the films were well conditioned (homogeneous with depth). However, the C cross-section changes rapidly with beam energy, precluding manual analysis of more complex structures. We show that integrating the non-Rutherford cross-sections in the IBA DataFurnace leads to excellent fits, and analysis of compositional Variation becomes trivial. We can demonstrate that the films have a very constant composition throughout their depth, that the precision of the analysis is about 2% and that the accuracy of the C determination approaches 10%. We demonstrate an error in the energy loss database (TRIM95) value of the ratio of Ni and Ta energy loss of 2%. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.