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NIST Database for the Simulation of Electron Spectra for Surface Analysis (SESSA)
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The objective of this database is to facilitate quantitative interpretation of Auger-electron and X-ray photoelectron spectra (AES/XPS) for surface analysis and to improve the accuracy of quantification in routine analysis. For this purpose, the database contains physical data required to perform quantitative interpretation of an electron spectrum for a specimen with a given composition. Retrieval of relevant data is performed by a small expert system that queries the comprehensive databases. A simulation module [1, 16] is also available within SESSA that provides an estimate of peak intensities as well as the energy and angular distribution of the emitted electron flux (see Section 4.9). The information needed by the expert system to accomplish its task closely matches instrument settings made by an experimenter when actually performing a measurement and is complemented by an initial estimate of the sample composition.
SESSA can be used for two main applications. First, data are provided for many parameters needed in quantitative AES and XPS (differential inverse inelastic mean free paths, total inelastic mean free paths, differential elastic- scattering cross sections, total elastic-scattering cross sections, transport cross sections, photoionization cross sections, photoionization asymmetry parameters, electron-impact ionization cross sections, photoelectron lineshapes, Auger-electron lineshapes, fluorescence yields, and Auger-electron backscattering factors). Second, Auger-electron and photoelectron spectra can be simulated for layered samples. The simulated spectra, for layer compositions and thicknesses specified by the user, can be compared with measured spectra. The layer compositions and thicknesses can then be adjusted to find maximum consistency between simulated and measured spectra. The design of the software allows the user to enter the required information in a reasonably simple way. The modular structure of the user interface closely matches that of the usual control units on a real instrument. In other words, any user who is familiar with a typical electron spectrometer can perform a retrieval/simulation operation with the SESSA software in a few minutes for a specimen with a given composition.
Section 3 familiarizes the user with some special features of the software. These features include a separate window for graphical representation of a selected physical quantity that is fully controllable by the user (see Section 4.2), a popup menu showing the reference to the literature for each retrieved datum, an on-the-fly database selection popup menu and, last but not least, the fully parallel operation of the graphical user interface (GUI) and the command line interpreter (CLI).
Section 4 presents a detailed and comprehensive description of the functionality of the software. The sources for the physical data in SESSA as well as the simulation algorithm are described in Section 6, and finally, Section 7 highlights some of the key features of the software with the aid of a few tutorials that are contained in this package in the form of CLI command files.
Users' guide
The software has been tested to run on a personal computer with the Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows® Vista operating systems. The CD also contains MacIntosh OS X and LINUX versions of the software. These versions have been tested to run on these platforms but have not been as extensively tested as the Windows versions. They are included here as unsupported software. The authors nevertheless welcome bug-reports, suggestions and comments on this software (as described in Section 8).
The databases and software need approximately 180 MB of disk space. The minimum amount of RAM required to run the program amounts to about 15 MB. The exact amount of RAM needed depends on the type of problem under study. When a simulation is performed, the minimum required RAM increases to 30 MB. When simulations are performed for large-scale complex problems (see Section 4.9), memory usage can increase even further.
For installation on a personal computer with the Windows operating system, insert the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, click on the icon titled SESSA_setup.exe and follow the instructions. For other platforms, see the installation instructions file on the CD-ROM.
Apart from the usual components of a typical GUI, SESSA also provides a graphical display of certain quantities. For example, press CTRL-3 for a graphical representation of the differential elastic cross section and differential inverse inelastic mean free path. These displays cannot be changed in any way by the user. By double clicking on any of these displays, however, an additional plot window is opened that allows full user access to the display variables by means of a right mouse click (see Section 4.2). This plot window can also be opened from within the CLI by an appropriate command.
Figure 3.2. Example of a database selection popup menu.
Two special features of SESSA are the traceability of the data and the on-the-fly selection of databases. By means of a right mouse click on a numerical value retrieved from a database, or on the corresponding graphical display, a menu pops up that offers two choices: either to activate the reference dialog or to activate the on-the-fly database selection menu (see Fig. 3.2). If the latter is selected, the user can choose between the different databases that are available for the quantity in question. Alternatively, the user can reset the choice of the database to the default database, i.e., the database that has been selected in the database defaults menu (see Section 4.8). Since not every database in SESSA is extensive, in that it contains a datum for a given quantity for any arbitrary element, energy subshell, etc., it may happen that the requested datum is not returned by the selected database. In such cases, the expert system automatically queries the other databases available for the quantity in question. In this way, at least one of the databases contains a value or a credible estimate for the requested datum. In some cases, this "backup" database will rely on a theoretical or semi-empirical expression to predict the desired quantity. In the database selection popup menu, the database selected by a user is indicated by √ while an asterisk indicates that the database was successfully queried (see Fig. 3.2).
Most quantities in SESSA that are represented by a single value can be changed by the user if desired. The database selection menu provides a quick way to retrieve any value from a database. Quantities that can only be represented by an array of values, such as the differential cross section, cannot generally be directly changed by the user.
The reference dialog is part of an implementation feature that provides full traceability of the data retrieved by SESSA: Every datum is accompanied by a reference that can be inspected at any time. In the GUI this is achieved by a right mouse click either on the numerical value of a parameter or on its graphical display window, as shown in Fig. 3.2. An example of the resulting information is given in Fig. 3.3. When fundamental physical data concerning an electron spectrum are given as outputs by the database (see Section 3.4), numbered references for all retrieved data
are written to a separate file with the ending "refs.txt", while the remarks in the lower two boxes of the reference dialog window are accordingly numbered and written to a file with the extension "rems.txt".
Figure 3.3. The reference dialog window.
The CLI console can be opened by selecting the "Project/Command Line Interface" menu in the project menu or by pressing the shortcut key CTRL-9. The CLI console window is shown in Fig. 3.4. At the bottom of the CLI console, a number of buttons are seen. Clicking the "Command List" button opens a window within the CLI console that presents the structure of the commands of the CLI. Clicking on any of these commands generates a text string on the CLI corresponding to the command in question preceded by HELP. As a result, the help text corresponding to the selected command is displayed in the CLI. In Fig. 3.4 the above is illustrated for the command SAMPLE PARAMETERS SET IMFP. Any command appearing in the CLI may be edited by using the up and down arrow and the delete key etc., and can be entered by pressing return. In this way, a command generated by clicking on the command list can be used to operate the software. Thus the command list provides a most useful reference guide for the CLI syntax.
In the command line interpreter, the modularity of the software is realized by the use of different scopes, each scope allowing a user to manipulate or inspect a certain subset of the relevant data and control parameters corresponding to a window in the GUI. Table 3.2 gives a survey of the scopes presently defined in SESSA. (^1) The acronyms shown in
Table 3.2 are used frequently in SESSA, and are defined in Table 3.3.
1 In the present implementation of SESSA, there is an exception to the one-to-one correspondence between the GUI menus and the CLI scopes: the geometry, source, and spectrometer scopes have been organized as submenus of an
Table 3.2. Scopes and sub-scopes of the CLI. The acronyms are defined in Table 3.3. Further information is given in Section 6.1. 1 main 2 \ sample 3 \ \ peak 4 \ \ parameters 5 \ source 6 \ spectrometer 7 \ geometry 8 \ simulation 9 \ database 10 \ \ DIIMFP 12 \ \ IMFP 13 \ \ ECS 14 \ \ EMFP 15 \ \ TRMFP 16 \ \ PCS 17 \ \ PAP 18 \ \ EIICS 19 \ \ XPL 20 \ \ AEL 21 \ \ FY 22 \ \ ABF
Table 3.3. Acronyms for the physical quantities in the SESSA databases.
IMFP Inelastic Mean Free Path DIIMFP Differential Inverse Inelastic Mean Free Path TECS Total Elastic Cross Section TRECS Transport (Elastic) Cross Section ECS (Differential) Elastic Cross Section EMFP Elastic mean free path TRMFP Transport mean free path PAP Photoionization Asymmetry Parameter EIICS Electron Impact Ionization Cross Section ABF Auger Backscattering Factor FY Fluorescence Yield PCS Photoionization Cross Section XPL X-ray Photoelectron Lineshape AEL Auger Electron transition Lineshape
As an instructive example of the parallel operation of the GUI and CLI, press CTRL-5 to open the "Experiment/geometry" menu and change, say, the sample orientation azimuth (phi) to 45 degrees. Now press CTRL- 9 to open the CLI console. On the console, the command \GEOMETRY SET SAMPLE PHI 45 GEO 1 appears as it was generated by the GUI. By pressing the up, left and right arrows on the CLI console, the command can be edited and entered again, for example to set the sample azimuth to 30 degrees. Bringing the "Experiment/geometry" menu to the front again by pressing CTRL-5 gives a graphical display of the new orientation of the sample surface normal.
Scrolling through the list of commands processed by SESSA is possible by using the up and down arrow in the CLI console. Alternatively, a list of the processed CLI commands for review can be easily displayed by clicking on the "Session History" button in the CLI console. Any of the commands in this list can be processed again by double clicking on it. The session history can be cleared by pressing the corresponding button in the session history command list. This is an important feature for producing CLI command files using the "Save session" command (see below).
The great advantage of this parallel CLI/GUI interface is that a set of CLI commands can be read from or written to a text file, using the PROJECT LOAD/SAVE SESSION command or by pressing the "Load/save session" button on the CLI console. This makes it possible to process a large batch of commands. Such CLI command files can be produced in a simple way by a user without any knowledge of the CLI syntax. This can be done by a series of mouse clicks in the GUI and saving all previously entered commands by pressing the "Save session" button on the CLI console. The tutorials described in Section 7 are examples of CLI command files produced in this way. A # character at the beginning of a line in a CLI command file designates the line as a comment.
Another example of a SESSA CLI file is a file by the name of "SESSA_ini.ses" that resides in the directory where the SESSA binary code is located. This file is read whenever the software starts up and the commands contained in it are processed by the CLI. This may be advantageous for a user who commonly works on problems requiring settings that differ from the default settings in SESSA. This may concern the radiation type, the instrument settings, the sample composition, and so on.
A CLI command as well as an input field in the GUI may comprise special data types as indicated in Table 3.4. These data types are now described in turn.
For a user, there are two different ways to enter the material in the sample menu: one way is to enter the material specifier in the format used internally by SESSA, with a special syntax (e.g., "/SI/O2/" for silicon dioxide), as explained below. The alternative method is to enter the material in a more intuitive syntax (e.g., "SiO2" for silicon dioxide). If the material is specified in this simpler more intuitive way, SESSA will translate this into the internal syntax that will be displayed in the material field in the GUI. Since the internal syntax is more powerful than the intuitive syntax, it will be described first and then the intuitive syntax.
The internal material specifier consists either of a number of compound specifiers, or a number of constituent specifiers, or both. The constituent specifier, enclosed in forward slashes (/) consists of an element identifier (the usual abbreviation of the elemental name from the periodic table of the elements), a chemical state attribute (an arbitrary string specified by the user enclosed in square brackets ([ ]), and a real number describing the abundance of this species in a given layer of the compound or material:
< constituent specifier > = /< element identifier >[< chemical state attribute >]< abundance >/
Table 3.4: Special data types for SESSA user interaction. 1
Information concerning the experimental settings specified by the user, the retrieved data corresponding to these settings, and the outcome of a model calculation can be written to a number of files by selecting the "Project/Save/Output" option in the GUI or by issuing the command PROJECT SAVE OUTPUT in the CLI. As a result, a number of different files containing information in several categories are generated. For several categories, writing of the output can be (de)activated in the "Project/preferences" menu (see Section 4.3).
An alternative quick and convenient means to produce output is to use the PLOT SHOW DATA option in the main plot window popup menu that displays the data contained in a plot in a separate read-only window (see Chapter 4.2), together with the relevant literature citation. The information in this window can be copied and pasted into another application for further processing.
This chapter describes all commands utilized by the command line interface (CLI) in some detail. Since a close correspondence exists between the CLI and the graphical user interface (GUI), no detailed description of the latter is given. In most cases, it is evident which component of the GUI provides the equivalence to a certain CLI command. In the CLI, however, it is often necessary within a command to specify which peak, which geometry, which layer, etc., one is addressing with the issued command. This situation can lead to awkward syntax such as DO SOMETHING LAYER 1 PEAK 2 REGION 3. In the GUI, the situation can be handled in a more elegant way within a submenu by means of one or more graphical selection tools. For example, there is an equivalence between the "Choose peak" and "Choose layer" selection boxes in the "Sample/parameters" menu in the GUI and the peak number and layer number in the equivalent CLI command (SAMPLE PARAMETERS PLOT ECS PEAK <PEAK #> LAYER <LAYER #>).
In the following sections concerning the CLI syntax of various scopes, < > represents a parameter of the type indicated that has to be entered by the user, while [ ] is an optional parameter that may be omitted.
The energies displayed in and accepted by both the GUI and the CLI can be specified either on a kinetic energy scale or, in the case of incoming photons, it may optionally be specified on a binding energy scale. The user can set a preference in the "Project/preferences" menu. Depending on this setting, an energy referred to in the remainder of this Section is implied to be specified either on a kinetic or a binding-energy scale.
The Project menu in the GUI is shown in Fig. 4.1. The CLI console, the separate plot window, and the preferences dialog can be opened from within the project menu. The plot window, the CLI console, and the preferences dialog are described below. The project menu is otherwise equivalent to the project menu in the CLI, as described in the next Section.
Figure 4.1. Graphical user interface for the PROJECT Menu.
4.1.1 Synopsis of CLI Commands
Clear all data and reset everything to the default values.
Data can be displayed in a separate window that allows full user access to the display parameters by double clicking the window. Various quantities in SESSA can be graphically displayed. These displays cannot in any way be changed by the user. However, by double clicking on any of these windows, a separate plot window is opened providing full user access to the plot settings, as shown in Fig. 4.2 as an example. This plot window is also accessible via the "Project/Plotwindow" command in the GUI and through appropriate commands (pertaining to the quantity on display) in the CLI. A right mouse click in the plot window activates a popup menu that opens the plot settings window (see Fig. 4.2), a comprehensive menu for manipulating the settings of the display.
Alternatively, the quick axis settings menu can be activated. The latter allows a user to set the axis range, and to turn on/off an axis grid or a logarithmic scaling of the axis. Furthermore, the popup menu can be utilized to open a read- only window displaying the data contained in the plot along with the corresponding references, as indicated in Fig. 4.3.
4.2.1 Synopsis of CLI Commands
Selects the x-axis for logarithmic scaling.
Figure 4.3. Read-only window displaying the data contained in the Plot window. The data in this window can be transferred to other software by means of copy and paste operations for further processing.
Disable drawing of the grid for the x-axis.
Disable drawing of the grid for the y-axis.
Activate drawing of a legend in the plot.
Deactivate drawing of a legend in the plot.
Sets all curves to visible.
Sets the energy scale to kinetic energy.
Show the values of the parameters in the PREFERENCES menu (only available in the CLI).
This menu controls the parameters specifying the structure of the sample and the physical parameters of the sample of relevance for the particular experimental conditions, as indicated in Fig. 4.5. The sample is conceived to consist of a number of non-crystalline and continuous layers each with a given composition, density and thickness. The interface between the various layers is assumed to be ideally flat, except for the vacuum-solid interface that may exhibit a certain morphology. Presently, one morphology type besides an ideally flat surface is implemented: a surface with a given roughness, specified by the relative surface area (RSA) as defined below [5]. The material in a given layer is specified by a special string describing the elemental composition (see below). All relevant parameters for a specified material are retrieved by the expert system and can be inspected and changed in the "Sample peak" menu (see Section 4.4.5) and the "Sample parameter" menu (see Section 4.4.3). A value for the density of each layer is also determined for each layer. For elemental solids, this quantity is read from a database; for most other materials, it is estimated on the basis of elemental densities of the constituents in each layer. The estimated density may be in error by more than 100 %. It is therefore recommended that the user should specify a more realistic value for the density in such cases.
4.4.1 The SAMPLE LAYER Menu
This menu (selected by the Layer tab in the Sample menu of Fig. 4.5) controls the parameters specifying the thickness, density, bandgap energy, number of valence electrons per atom or molecule, number of atoms per molecule, composition, thickness, and roughness of the surface.
4.4.2 Synopsis of CLI Commands
(see Section 3.3). THICKNESS: Specify the thickness (in Å) of the layer to be added. ABOVE: Add the layer above the specified layer instead of above the layer that is selected in the "Choose layer" box.
Reset the complete sample structure to its default (a homogeneous Si sample).
Figure 4.5. Graphical user interface for the SAMPLE Menu.