We are looking to characterize "fluorine flowers" on the surface of aluminum pads. Essentially characterizing contaminates present only on the surface of a homogenous material. So the poor surface sensitivity of EDX is a major limiting factor for us. This would be more of a monitoring effort, so getting relative values in comparison to a golden sample would be fine. Would you all have any techniques that might help, or papers that have addressed similar issues?
You may want to try low voltage operations (as was suggested by Adeyinka Aina ). I would choose 3 kV, good enough to excite both F and Al.
Do you alternatively have access to XPS? Basically that's the eversed physics of EDX, but it's very surface sensitive.
Jürgen Weippert We can/do send samples out externally for XPS and Auger. However do not have those capabilities internally, so are looking for methods to help with rough monitoring efforts. If its even possible in this situation.
We will be running experiments on known samples soon. Just wanted to reach out to the community for any advice, as I'm sure there are plenty of people more experienced than me.
Fluorine is a light element. One way to increase sensitivity for light elements is to lower the acceleration voltage of the SEM to 4 or 5 KV. This will require that one realigns the SEM and to optimize the probe for these working conditions. Please reference: "EDS-Lite, Quantitative Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy of Light Elements." Microscopy and Microanalysis, 1 July 2017.
The "Material Science" section of the meeting.
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