Talk:Auger electron spectroscopy

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Whomever wrote this page should add something about how this is a non-destructive surface analysis technique. Also, if anybody has a graph of an Auger spectrum, please post it. One last thing, explaining that the incident kinetic energy is not necessarily the same as the exigent kinetic energy of the electron because of all of the transitions that could occur is a little weak.
[unsigned comment left Sept 14, 2006]
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I'd like to suggest that the process be described a little more clearly - right now I'm reading between the lines a lot, but it sounds like the process is:
an X-ray (from where?  A brehmstrahlung X-ray tube?  A syncrotron? I"m guess the former, if the energy is in the range of keV) strikes the sample
the X-ray is absorbed by an electron in one of the core atomic energy levels, which is excited out of the atom entirely (a "photoelectron")
the now-empty core state is now filled by another electron from the atom (the article says "outer shell" - is this necessarily so, or just what's useful for this process?)
if the energy difference between the core level and the level that the filling electron came from is greater than the energy difference between the outer shell and the vacuum, then an outer electron can be excited away (and presumably this one is the "auger electron") from the atom (leaving it now at charge 2-, since the x-ray photoelectron is gone, too), with any leftover energy contributing to the kinetic energy of the Auger electron.
What's the basis for the analysis?  Is this a pulsed X-ray time-of-flight system?
Beakdan 15:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

message: There is a paragraph about derivative mode in Auger electron spectroscopy#Instrumentation that reads:
"Since the intensity of the Auger peaks may be small compared to the noise level of the background, AES is often run in a derivative mode which serves to highlight the peaks by modulating the electron collection current via a small applied AC voltage. Since this \Delta V=k\sin(\omega t), the collection current becomes I(V+k\sin(\omega t)). Taylor expanding  gives:
:I(V+k\sin(\omega t))\approx I_0+I'(V+k\sin(\omega t))+O(I)
Using the setup in figure 2, detecting the signal at frequency ω will give a value for I' or \frac{dN}{dE}."
I'm not too familiar with how this works, but the taylor expansion is definately wrong. Should it instead be
:I(V+k\sin(\omega t))\approx I(V)+I'(V)k\sin(\omega t)
Is the measured quantity then the amplitude of the oscillations in I? To me the motivation for doing this seems strange. Usually it is a really bad idea to differentiate a noisy signal. The motivation that there is a large background with slow variations seems more likely. I hope someone who knows more about this could correct the article. Ulflund (talk) 06:47, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Derivative mode taylor expansion 

message: It is worth noting that a movement to rename the effect to Auger-Meitner effect has been started to acknowledge the contribution of Lisa Meitner in discovering and explaining the effect.  
See for example https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4281 Kibuc (talk) 12:30, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  A proposal for renaming Auger effect  

message: There is a separate Auger effect page. I suggest merging the content from that (it is shorter) into this article, then switching Auger effect to a redirect. The other page is OK, albeit a lot shorter, with too much overlap. Yes/No votes? Ldm1954 (talk) 14:20, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to merge in [[Auger effect]]