Energy dependence of the electron attenuation length in lead arachidate Langmuir-Blodgett films

Application of differential charging in XPS for structural study of Langmuir-Blodgett films

Differential charging in XPS was recently shown to be a novel technique for studying in-depth structural information of discrete cadmium layers in Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) multilayer films. Here we report structural modification in multilayer LB films after sulfidation using differential charging in angle-dependent XPS that are not observable by the x-ray reflectivity technique. An AFM study suggests less modification in compact LB films in comparison to the non-compact ones. The differential charging in the LB multilayers changes after sulfidation due to the formation of cadmium sulfide nanostructures in the cadmium arachidate LB matrix, which was reflected prominently in the differential charging of Cd 3d(5/2) XPS peaks. It was found that, even after sulfidation, the compact multilayer LB films were differentially charged in the out-of-plane (in-depth) direction, whereas this kind of differential charging was not apparent in rough and non-compact films. Our results clearly indicate that for LB films with compact structure a partial layered structure survives the impact of particle formation, whereas for non-compact films the modification is large and no specific conclusion could be drawn. While x-ray reflectivity cannot provide specific information about the internal structure of the post-sulfidation films it shows that the total thickness of the films reduces in all cases.

Characterization of Langmuir-Blodgett film using differential charging in X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Differential charging is often regarded as a problem in X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies, especially for insulating or partially conducting samples. Neutralization techniques have been developed to circumvent this effect. Instead of neutralizing the positive charge, which is often the technique to obtain good quality data, it is possible to exploit this phenomenon to get useful information about the sample. An attempt is made here to use this differential charging to study the mono- and multilayer Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films of cadmium arachidate on silicon substrate. The surface potential was probed by measuring XPS line shift with respect to their neutral position and was found to have correlation with the thickness of the films. No differential charging was observed in the monolayer LB film where there was only one layer of cadmium headgroup. Significant differential charging was observed for multilayer films, the total charging as well as the differential charging in these films increase with increasing number of layers. Angle-resolved XPS measurements were performed to obtain additional information about the structure of the films. Charging of the upper layer of the films close to the vacuum interface was found to be less compared to that of the interior. The discrete cadmium layers were found to be more differentially charged compared to the continuous hydrocarbon stacks in the multilayer LB films. Charging of the discrete cadmium layers has been utilized to obtain quantitative information of the multilayer LB films.