Quantified imaging of SiO2 particles

XPS imaging is an important tool for investigating the lateral distribution of surface chemistry on the micron scale.  Photoelectrons emitted from core electronic levels of surface atoms may be focused to form a two dimensional image on a suitable detector to allow the lateral distribution of the photoelectrons to be determined.  AXIS spectrometers have a pulse counting delay line detector (DLD) system which allows images to be quantified.  Spectra may be generated from every pixel in an image hence the chemical state of a sample surface may be quantitatively determined at high lateral and high energy resolution.  In this example silicon dioxide particles dispersed on the surface of a silicon wafer were analysed to demonstrate the flexibility of XPS imaging.