Article

Micro-or nano-sized defects in a material that exist just beneath the sample surface can be difficult to chemically characterize and image by either surface or bulk characterization techniques alone. Bulk spectral imaging techniques such as EDS suffer from poor spatial resolution, while surface analysis techniques such as AES struggle to locate the particles across a sample surface. This application note highlights the complementary nature of AES, EDS, and FIB together in a single UHV system for the characterization of a buried particle in aluminum sheet metal.