AUGER DEPTH PROFILE ANALYSIS OF DEEPLY BURIED INTERFACES

The requirements to be met for achieving good depth resolution for Auger depth profiling of thin layers buried by a thick (more than 100 nm) overlayer are discussed, assuming that one uses rotated specimens and glancing angle of incidence. It is shown that the glancing angle of incidence is necessary to avoid the defect accumulation, while for reducing the atomic mixing low ion energy is to be used. Depth profiling results of various multilayer systems are discussed. The dependences of the depth resolution on ion energy and angle of incidence show a trend similar to those resulted by the TRIM code, but the absolute values of the calculated and measured depth resolutions are strongly different.