Overlayer thickness determination by XPS using the multiline approach

Abstract An important analytical application of x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy is the possibility of determining the overlayer thickness in the nanometer range. The relevant procedure should be based on a realistic theoretical model relating the photoelectron signal intensities, measured for the overlayer and for the substrate, to the overlayer thickness. In the most frequently used procedure, we derive the thickness from the ratio of intensity measured for the overlayer and intensity measured for the substrate. We may expect that the resulting thickness depends on the pair of intensities selected for analysis. This is due to the fact that each calculated intensity has a certain systematic error associated with accuracy of parameters used in calculations. We consider here a possibility of using more than two intensities, for a given element, in the procedure of thickness determination. In this way, we expect that the analysis is more accurate due to the fact that the systematic errors are averaged. In the past, similar approach has been successfully applied to the procedure of surface composition determination. To test the proposed multiline approach, the Au 4f, Ni 2p, and Ni 3p intensities were measured for a series of Ni overlayers deposited on the Au substrate. It has been found that the proposed approach well performs at relatively large overlayer thicknesses. It provides values that are averages of values obtained from other methods. At small overlayer thicknesses, we observe a scatter of thicknesses obtained from different methods which can be due to the discontinuity of the overlayer. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.