Dear colleague Villy Vrakatseli

Have a nice time and good day.

You can use Quartz substrate.

Yours

A. El-Denglawey

Probably makes little difference as XPS is only exploring the top 5 - 10 atomic layers of your material.  What material is your thin film on?  In the case of a powder (you say 'thin film' though), it could be put onto double sided Scotch tape and transferred to the sample holder.  As, the learned scholar above states, quartz would be an ideal substrate if you have the material already deposited on it.

As XPS generally probes ~10nm of the upper most surface at most, the type of substrate shouldn't matter much. 

Depending on how the layers are made and you want to match the thermal expansion coefficient, silicon or magnesium oxide.

I have used Si wafer as a substrate for XPS measurements and it worked fine. Again it should not matter that much since XPS measures only top few atomic layers ( ~ 5 to 10) of the surface.

Thanks.

Thank you all...

Vasiliki Vrakatseli

According to my experience, the substrate is also an important factor when it comes to XPS characterization, especially in thin films. Our material, when very finely coated on the substrate and at a depth of 4 to 6 nanometers, will also be caught by XPS. Silicon wafers (SiO2) will also be included in our Peak, so we cannot properly deconvolute our Oxygen peak from TiOx and SiO2.

Choose a substrate that does not contain our material elements.

Thank you I hope you will understand, This is my first answer on research gate.