Experimental study of the energy dependence of transmission in photoelectron spectrometers

The present study describes an experiment which allows determination of the transmission of any photoelectron spectrometer using AlKα radiation. The procedure is based on the energy independence of transmission in an iron-free, magnetic-type spectrometer. The relative line intensifies for Ag measured using such an instrument are used as a reference data set. The transmission of a VG ESCALAB-5 spectrometer has been determined and found to be proportional to E in the constant retarding ratio mode, and proportional to E^?q, with q = 0.4 ± 0.05, in the constant analyser-energy mode, for energies usually encountered in XPS.