We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save this undefined to your undefined account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your undefined account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The theoretical concepts of the two methods are similar. Consequently, comparable fundamental parameter algorithms can be developed and applied to a quantitative analysis of bulk specimens and to an investigation of thin layers by TEY and by XRFA. Whereas the sampling depth of XRFA is determined by photoelectric absorption, for TEY the escape probability of electrons reduces this quantity to values of less than 100 nm. Thus, TEY is practically a surface analytical method with sampling depths between X-ray photoelectron spectrometry and XRFA. The decrease of fluorescence yields with decreasing atomic number Z is responsible for a significant reduction of the elemental sensitivity of XRFA in the range of low-Z elements. On the other hand, the elemental sensitivity of TEY increases with decreasing Z as a consequence of the dominating contribution of KLL- and LMM-Auger electrons to measured TEY jumps. The possibility to quantify submonolayers and layers of nm thickness buried under nm layers, a nearly linear dependence of TEY signals versus the elemental concentration of multielement specimens and the EXAFS and XANES information that is contained in measured TEY responses, are valuable features of TEY. A disadvantage of TEY is the time consuming sequential data accumulation of TEY spectra when compared to energy dispersive XRFA. But due to progress in instrumentation TEY is no longer reserved to synchrotron radiation sources