Defining the nature of adventitious carbon and improving its merit as a charge correction reference for XPS

The chemical nature of adventitious carbon (AdC), a thin layer of carbonaceous material that deposits on the surface of most air-exposed samples and is widely used for charge correction of insulating materials in X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), has been investigated by XPS and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) on a variety of air-exposed samples from various material classes. The results from this case study show that on average AdC is aliphatic in nature with ∼25% of carbon species having bonds to oxygen. D-parameter and ToF-SIMS results show that AdC is not graphitic in nature, as had been suggested in earlier studies. Using assumptions about volatile organic compounds (VOC)…

• WU
  Western University

  Award: -2020-00573
• NS
  Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada