Study of annealing-induced interdiffusion in In2O3/Ag/In2O3 structures by a combined X-ray reflectivity and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence analysis

• We performed combined X-ray reflectivity and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence analysis on a multilayered structure.
• The material composition and the layers structure have been determined.
• The structural modifications due to a thermal annealing have been studied
• The influence of the excitation energy on the sensitivity of the technique has been shown.

The combination of X-ray reflectivity and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence has been applied to the characterization of an In2O3/Ag/In2O3 stack for advanced photovoltaic applications. X-ray reflectivity is a well-known method for the characterization of multilayered structures by providing information on the thickness and the in-depth electronic density. Grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence provides information about the elemental depth distribution. As these techniques are based on similar measurement procedures and data evaluation approaches, their combination reduces the uncertainties of the individual techniques and provides an accurate depth-resolving analysis of multi-layers.It has been shown that the combination of the techniques give insight into the material composition and the layers structure (thickness, density) as well as modifications induced by a thermal annealing.As X-ray fluorescence signals have been acquired at different excitation energies, the influence of this parameter on the sensitivity of the measurements to the structural properties has been shown.