The Practical Studies spectral library reveal or demonstrate the a variety of trends, methods,
effects, results, applications, and phenomena, such as:
(1) the tendency of many elements to naturally form native oxides that are 10-80 angstroms in thickness and behave as
though the native oxide/metal system was electrically conductive,
(2) the phenomenon that the C (1s) BEs of the hydrocarbons on the surface of these native oxides have been found to
vary from 284.5 eV to 286.5 eV whereby these variations can be partially attributed to surface dipoles and/or other
electric field effects at the oxide/vacuum interface.
(3) the ability to use the aforementioned, experimentally measured C (1s) BEs of the adventitious hydrocarbons to
provide more reliable reference energies for energy referencing the other XPS signals produced from non-conductive
metal oxides. The results of using these experimentally determined C (1s) BEs indicate that this method is more reliable
than the traditional method that uses ill-defined, fixed values such as 284.6, 284.7, 284.8, or 285.0 eV.
(4) the tendency of non-aromatic hydrocarbon polymers to lose hydrogen due to long term exposure to monochromatic
X-rays,
(5) the tendency of polymers with aromatic groups and triple bond structures to minimize damage caused by long term
or high dosage exposures to monochromatic X-rays,
(6) the differential charging effects of flood gun electrons on naturally formed native oxides,
(7) the tendency of the C (1s), O (1s), and the main element signals from simple metal oxides to have FWHM values
between 1.0-1.3 eV, much smaller than previously believed,
(8) the tendency of elements on the left side of the periodic table to form oxides and carbides after ion etching in
cryopumped UHV,
(9) Scofield photo-ionization cross-sections, which we have tested, are basically reliable for the main XPS signals, but
may have errors for the weaker XPS signals,
(10) a tendency for the BEs of pure elements to display a 0.03-0.06 eV increase in BE due to repeated and extensive
ion etching of the pure elements,
(11) the tendency for the BEs of freshly ion etched pure elements to show a time dependent de-crease in BE
(0.03-0.06 eV) even at room temperature (i.e. surface reconstruction),
(12) charge compensation results obtained by using grazing X-rays which indicates a potential new method to simplify
charge compensation of insulators,
(13) a method to directly study excited states by collecting XPS data while exposing materials to CW lasers tuned to
various wavelengths,
(14) a CW laser beam cleaning method which partially or completely removes hydrocarbons and/or water adsorbed on
colored binary oxides, and
(15) a significant BE shift due to ion etching of clean crystalline surfaces of silicon, germanium, and selenium.