Composition of Ni-Ta-C thick films using simulated annealing analysis of elastic backscattering spectrometry data

Simulated annealing has been used successfully on elastic backscattering sp ectrometry data collected from tribological films of NiTaxCy on Si substrat es, Manual analysis of the data was possible assuming that the films were w ell conditioned (homogeneous with depth). However, the C cross-section chan ges rapidly with beam energy, precluding manual analysis of more complex st ructures. We show that integrating the non-Rutherford cross-sections in the IBA DataFurnace leads to excellent fits, and analysis of compositional Var iation becomes trivial. We can demonstrate that the films have a very const ant composition throughout their depth, that the precision of the analysis is about 2% and that the accuracy of the C determination approaches 10%. We demonstrate an error in the energy loss database (TRIM95) value of the rat io of Ni and Ta energy loss of 2%. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.