INELASTIC ELECTRON BACKGROUND FUNCTION FOR ULTRAVIOLET PHOTOELECTRON-SPECTRA

We present a simple approach to the determination of inelastic backgro unds in low-energy electron spectra such as UPS that fits the spectra much better than does the iterative integral background which is gener ally used in higher-energy spectroscopies such as XPS. Including the s econdary-electron cascade process explicitly yields a non-iterative fu nction that gives a good description of the inelastic background in UP S spectra from transition-metal oxides for low photon energies. For ph oton energies above about 40 eV but below the XPS region, the backgrou nd function is not always able to adequately model the spectra; the di screpancy cannot be removed by a more sophisticated treatment of the e lectron scattering function.