depends what your film is made of, XPS (Xray Photoemission Spectroscopy) or XRF (Xray fluorescence) would probably do a job for you. You could do EELS in a TEM (Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy). What's the reasont hat you don't want to do EDX?
To add to what Johanna said, there are multiple techniques you could use depending on which part of the film you want to analyze. XPS using an Al/Mg K_alpha source will give you very surface information (within the first few nanometers) as will the related technique of Auger spectroscopy The advantage of Auger is that you could use a focused electron source that gives you much better lateral spatial resolution than a typical XPS setup. You could also look at some mass-spectrometry based techniques like inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) or similar techniques based on ablating the surface of the film using a laser. Bond vibration based techniques such as IR and Raman can, depending on the system, also give you qualitative, if not quantitative, information about the composition.
Yes we can further probe the elemental composition by running (Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis (ESCA) otherwise known as X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. It offers the advantage of giving information about the binding energy of the of the elements involved and the lattice parameters
tof-SIMS is also an useful, highly surface sensitive semi-quantitative tool
If you have both organic and inorganic in your material then you may go for XPS. If it contains only the inorganic material you can go for AAS (Atomic absorption spectroscopy).
what kind of thin films you are dealing with???
If you are talking about Polymer thin films, You can dissolve in an organic solvent and carry out simple wet tests for presence of functional groups. You can refer to VOGEL's book on "Practical Organic chemistry".
First get the exact weight of your coating [can be got by substracting the weight of coated substrate from uncoated one].
for Se:
dissolve the deposited film in conc HCl. then add equal quantity of cold conc.HCl which is saturated with SO2. Se will settle down. wash with HCl and water. dry to constant weight and you will get the amount of Se present.
For Te:
do the same thing til addition of HCL saturated with SO2.then add 15% aq.hydrazinium chloride and again HCl saturated with SO2. now filter and dry n weigh
for Zn:
there is a common method to precipitate zinc using 8-hydroxyquinaldine.
once you have got weights of your individual constituents, you can find their ratio and confirm the composition of thin film
As a special technique using mass spectroscopy you could also try atom probe (you also find some information under the keyword "LEAP"). There indivitual atoms are pulled out of a thin tip by a high electric field and then identified via mass spectroscopy. The precision depends a lot on the homogeneity of the material and mainly works for conductive materials, insulators are difficult. Furthermore the preparation for semiconductors requires a focus ion beam tool.
The advantage of this technique is that it combines a high chemical sensitivity with a relatively high spatial resolution, as there are algoritms to deduce the spacial position where the atom had been within the sample .
You can do ICP-OES , it is best technique to get the chemical(elemental) composition
YES ICP is best techniques to measure the elemental compositions than EDX.
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