PNNL

Abstract

Real-time analysis of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data has significant potential advantages to scientists and analysts in that it has the potential to qualitatively alter the way an experiment is carried forward. As an example, immediate information about the magnitude of contamination and the layering of the surface could allow the scientist to immediately ask the next level of question and quickly re-direct the next experiment or test, even before the sample has been removed from the spectrometer. In addition to changing the nature of possible experiments, the immediate automated analysis of relatively simple procedures that an operator would normally conduct manually after the data files are saved, the report generation summarizing these analyses, and saving of this report to files with the critical metadata attached, has the potential to improve the turn-around time for data analysis, increase the sophistication of data analysis reportable to the scientist and reduce the labor involved in data analysis, resulting in significant time and cost savings.