Quantification of AES depth profiles by the MRI model

The main physical effects that contribute to interface broadening in the sputter depth profiles of polycrystalline metallic multilayer structures were studied by comparison of measured and simulated AES depth profiles. An algorithm based on the so-called mixing–roughness-information depth (MRI) model was used to simulate AES depth profiles of Ni/Cr multilayer structures with different roughnesses of the initial surfaces. The simulated depth profiles were compared with measurements performed at two different depth profiling parameters on the Ni/Cr and Al/Ni/Cr multilayer structures with an initial surface roughness of about 1.0 and 21.5 nm, respectively. The comparison of simulated and measured depth profiles enabled us to separate and estimate different contributions to the interface broadening, as well as their dependence on the sputter depth. We found that roughness was the dominant factor related to depth resolution with respect to the information depth and atomic mixing contribution. The values of roughness introduced into the simulation algorithm coincided well with the values measured by AFM at the initial surface and after depth profiling. The results showed the capability of the simulation procedure based on the MRI model to separate and evaluate different contributions to the depth resolution.