Dude look in casa XPS software with the free version of casa you can do complete analysis of your XPS data.however you can not save the data.

It is correct that the area of the each peak will give you the elemental composition. however you need high resolution XPS of each element in your spectra.

It is not correct to take the ratio of intensities of the peaks in the survey spectra to determine the elemental composition ratio. You need to determine the elemental composition from the high resolution XPS spectra and then take the ratio of each elements.

good luck.

Sorry to rain on your parade but it is not correct to just use the area ratio. Every element has a different crosssection to the X-ray beam and hence will be a little more or less likely to ionize and emit a photoelectron. Hence you can not just use the area-ratios straight away but you will need to wheight them with a known cross-section prefactor which can be looked up in ESCA literature. Furthermore you will always have to keep in mind that XPS is a very surface sensitive method due to the nature of the photoelectrons which can only travel a short distance in the material due the charge they are carrying. So you can see what is coing on in the upper few nm in your material but will not be able to get a bulk sample analysis.

Hi Jan M Englert,

Thank you for the useful comments. It is good to know what you have mentioned about the cross section prefactor. I am just wondering what will be the difference between the corrected and uncorrected ones with the cross section prefactor. Can you give some references. For the second one when the sample is uniform will the information you get from top few layers will it differ from bulk analysis.

There are free references found around in the internet. Basically you have to be careful in determining the peak area on the one hand (here especially the background-substraction method will have a large impact) and on the other hand the sensitivity factors. There is a link to a presentation attached which deals with the characterization and quantification of XPS-data I can recommend.

I will provide public information about sensitivity factors I just found and hope this solves your question. For citation you migh want to find something more officially published but the table will give you a good idea about the composition at a first glance.

Best regards,

JME

http://mmrc.caltech.edu/SS_XPS/XPS_PPT/XPS_Slides.pdf

http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem924sg/XPSASFs.html

Thank you for the references and for the discussion. However i am aware that of the background correction of the peaks before i go with quantification of the elements.

kind regards,

santosh.