Application of Auger electron spectroscopy for semiconductor technology

Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) is a technique for determining the chemistry of the first few angstroms of a surface. Combined with ion sputtering AES allows one to obtain chemical profiles of thin films with a depth resolution of 10-30 Å. The high resolution in depth makes this method extremely useful for studying interfacial chemistry of composite thin film structures used in semiconductor device technology.