On the understanding of positive and negative ionization processes during ToF-SIMS depth profiling by co-sputtering with cesium and xenon

In this paper, ionization processes of secondary ions during ToF-SIMS dual beam depth profiling were studied by co-sputtering with 500 eV cesium and xenon ions and analyzing with 25 keV Ga⁺ ions. The Cs/Xe technique consists in diluting the cesium sputtering/etching beam with xenon ions to control the cesium surface concentration during ToF-SIMS dual beam depth profiling. Several depth profiles of a H-terminated silicon wafer were performed with varying Cs beam concentration and the steady state Si, Xe and Cs surface concentrations were measured in situ by Auger electron spectroscopy. It was found that the implanted Cs surface concentration increases with the Cs fraction in the beam from 0% for the pure Xe beam to a maximum Cs surface concentration for the pure Cs beam. Secondly, the variation of the silicon work function, due to the Cs implantation, was measured in situ and during depth profiling as the shift of the secondary ion kinetic energy distributions. Finally, the positive and negative elemental ion yields generated by the Ga analysis beam were recorded and modeled with respect to varying Cs/Xe mixture. We found that the Si⁻ and the Cs⁻ yields increase exponentially with the decrease of the silicon’s work function while that of Cs⁺ and Si⁺ decrease exponentially, as expected by the electron tunneling model.