Approaches for quantitative Auger electron spectroscopy of silicon after high dose nickel implantation

Summary Silicon samples of well-known nickel content have been produced by ion implantation in the dose range from 10¹⁷ to 10¹⁸ Ni/cm². Such implants are used for the comparison of different approaches for quantitative Auger electron analysis. Considerable differences are found between results obtained from peak-to-peak heights in the differentiated energy spectrum, neglecting composition-dependent changes of the line widths, and those results calculated with consideration of variations of the line widths. Matrix effects are taken into account by the inclusion of backscattering factors and escape depths. The results show that the elemental composition for the Ni/Si system cannot be accurately determined over the whole dose range. The discrepancies are attributed to sputter-induced composition changes or incorrect theoretical matrix factors.