Quantitative investigation of amorphous Fe/Ge and Fe/Si by inelastic peak shape analysis

Abstract We investigate the nanostructure of amorphous iron/silicon and iron/germanium samples with inelastic background analysis of X-ray photoelectron spectra. To this end we deposit iron films of varying thickness on amorphous silicon and germanium substrates. Additionally, we prepare codeposited iron–silicon and iron–germanium samples with varying stoichiometry. We show the interpolation of the inelastic mean free path from the corresponding values of the respective materials to be a valid approximation. We find that the Universal cross-section is fully sufficient for the analysis of iron/silicon and iron/germanium systems. The analysis of the nanostructure can be performed either with pure iron reference spectra or with coevaporated reference spectra. From the analysis of the Ge LMM and Si KLL substrate spectra we obtain only limited information for the thinner films. The analysis of the Fe 3p spectra from the deposits results in the quantitative determination of the nanostructure of our samples.