I have doped Chromium in thin films by a PVD sputtering technique, due to unavalibility of XPS, i am looking for alternative characterization technique to determine the content of Cr doped in thin films
Hello Basit,
if you want to characterize the "spectrum" of elements your films are doped with, I cannot recommend Raman spectrometry.
The only information you can get therefrom in the case of Raman active local modes giving a hint for the presence of doping elements. I would try to find a lab where you can carry out either
- EDX or
- X-ray fluorescence or
- or SIMS (secondary ion mass spectrometry)
These methods allow with increasing sensitivity for element concentration the finding of doping spectrum.
With Regard
R. Mitdank
Hi Basit Shah sorry to hear you can't use XPS! For Raman measurements of thin layers, I would think that you could just carry out a standard spontaneous Raman spectroscopy measurements with a high magnification objective. The high magnification should help to stop you from measuring the underlying material of the Chromium layer. You could carry out a small depth profile measurement to check that you are or are not measuring the Chromium. If you can use a wavelength in the visible range I believe that would work best for you.
This paper is a bit old, but hopefully will help you out more - https://bit.ly/39cHNdK. All the best!
Dear Basit Shah , probably you can, but it will depend on the way the Cr is in your thin film. I will take the Raman spectrum of the thin film and after doping it with Cr I would take a new spectrum to see the bands associated to Cr.
You can do the Raman analysis on top of the thin film or if a confocal Raman microscope is available it would be fine to do a Raman depth profile that would allow you to see the level of doping at different depths in your thin film.
If this information is of interest for you but lacking of a confocal Raman, an alternative would be to make a section of your sample, and performing the Raman analysis in the section, in this way you could get the information of doping depth and gradient.
Hope it helps.
Hello Basit,
if you want to characterize the "spectrum" of elements your films are doped with, I cannot recommend Raman spectrometry.
The only information you can get therefrom in the case of Raman active local modes giving a hint for the presence of doping elements. I would try to find a lab where you can carry out either
- EDX or
- X-ray fluorescence or
- or SIMS (secondary ion mass spectrometry)
These methods allow with increasing sensitivity for element concentration the finding of doping spectrum.
With Regard
R. Mitdank
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