AES - ENERGY CALIBRATION OF ELECTRON SPECTROMETERS .1. AN ABSOLUTE, TRACEABLE ENERGY CALIBRATION AND THE PROVISION OF ATOMIC REFERENCE LINE ENERGIES

Experiments have been made to provide calibrated kinetic energy values for AES peaks in order to calibrate Auger electron spectrometers of various resolving powers. The kinetic energies are measured using a VG Scientific ESCALAB II, which has power supplies appropriate for AES measurements in both the constant ΔE and constant ΔE/E modes. The absolute calibration of the energy scale is obtained by the development of a new measurement chain, which, in turn, is calibrated in terms of the post‐1990 representation of electron‐volts using XPS peaks with a traceable kinetic energy accuracy of 0.02 eV. The effects of instrumental and operating parameters, including the spectrometer dispersion and stray magnetic fields, are all assessed and contribute errors for three peaks not exceeding 0.06 eV and for two peaks not exceeding 0.03 eV. Calibrated positions in the direct spectrum are given for the Cu M2,3VV, Au N6,7VV, Ag M4NN, Cu L3VV and Au M5N6,7N6,7 transitions at 0.2 eV resolution, referred to both the Standard Vacuum Level and the Fermi level. For the differential spectrum, the positions of the negative excursions are derived numerically by computer from these data and are established with the same accuracy. Data are tabulated for the above peaks in both the direct and differentiated modes for the popular resolutions of 0.15%, 0.3% and 0.6% produced by Gaussian broadening of the high‐resolution spectra. Differentiations are effected by both sinusoidal modulation and Savitzky–Golay functions of 2 eV and 5 eV peak‐to‐peak. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.