Surface composition of alloys derived from elastic peak intensity

In the elastic peak electron spectroscopy (EPES) method, an electron with a given kinetic energy backscattered from a surface probes the surface region which is smaller than the layer analysed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy. Additionally, the depth analysed by the EPES method can be varied by changing the electron energies. This work presents a possibility of estimating the surface composition using the EPES approach on the example of AuPd alloys. The method involves measurements of intensity ratios of electrons backscattered elastically from alloy surface and a standard material, and then comparison to the intensity ratios resulting from the Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed method is tested by the Monte Carlo simulations of the elastic backscattering probabilities. It has been shown that the proposed method can be applied for fast estimation of the first monolayer composition in selected uniform binary alloy systems.