XPS Study of Niobium and Niobium-Nitride Nanofilms

A new, XPS-based approach to quantitative and nondestructive determination of the chemical and phase layer composition of multicomponent multilayer films is proposed. It includes a new method for subtracting the background of repeatedly inelastically scattered photoelectrons, taking into account the inhomogeneity of inelastic scattering over depth; a new way of decomposing a photoelectron line into component peaks, taking into account the physical nature of various decomposition parameters; solution of the problem of subtracting the background and decomposing the photoelectron line simultaneously; and determination of the thickness of the layers of a multilayer target using a simple equation. The phase-layer composition of nanoscale Nb and NbN films is determined, and the thicknesses of these layers are calculated.