Recent advances in surface analysis. Invited lecture

Abstract

The technology of surface analysis continues to make significant advances, particularly in the area of improved spatial resolution in those techniques that have up until now lacked it. Along with such advances have gone others in the technology of data and image processing, allowing two-dimensional chemical maps and, in conjunction with depth profiling, three-dimensional compositional maps, to be obtained. At the same time new techniques have emerged and grown in importance, e.g., in the atom probe category, i.e., the position-sensitive atom probe, and in the category of surface topography and spectroscopy, i.e., scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy. In this paper, these and other developments are described and their contribution to information about surfaces is discussed.