Quantitative and Fingerprint Analysis Method of Nitrogen in Graphitic Carbon Materials Using Total-Electron-Yield Soft X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy

To evaluate nitrogen in graphitic carbon materials, we propose a simple quantitative and fingerprint analysis method, which measures the total electron yield X-ray absorption spectra (TEY-XAS) of aromatic compounds possessing typical nitrogenated functional groups as standard samples, and fingerprint analysis is performed using the X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) in the N K and C K regions. The relationship between the atomic ratio of nitrogen to carbon (N/C) and the X-ray absorption intensity ratio of N K edge to C K edge (N Kσ*/C Kσ*) of standard samples yields a working curve to quantitatively analyze nitrogen. The successful application to carbon nitride films demonstrates that the proposed method is capable of quantitative and fingerprint analysis.