Surface studies of praseodymium by electron spectroscopies

Electron transport properties in praseodymium (Pr) foil samples were studied by elastic-peak electron spectroscopy (EPES). Prior to EPES measurements, the Pr sample surface was pre-sputtered by Ar ions with ion energy of 2-3 keV. After such treatment, the Pr sample still contained about 10 at.% of residual oxygen in the surface region, as detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) analyses. The inelastic mean free path (IMFP), characterizing electron transport within this region (4 nm-thick), was evaluated from EPES using both Ni and Au standards as a function of energy in the range of 0.5-2 keV. Experimental IMFPs, λ, were approximated by the simple function λ = kEp, where E is energy (in eV), and k = 0.1549 and p = 0.7047 were the fitted parameters. These values were compared with IMFPs for the praseodymium surface in which the presence of oxygen was tentatively neglected, and also with IMFPs resulting from the TPP-2M predictive equation for bulk praseodymium. We found that the measured IMFP values to be only slightly affected by neglect of oxygen in calculations. The fitted function applied here was consistent with the energy dependence of the EPES-measured IMFPs. Additionally, the measured IMFPs were found to be from 2% to 4.2% larger than the predicted IMFPs for praseodymium in the energy range of 500-1000 eV. For electron energies of 1500 eV and 2000 eV, there was an inverse correlation between these values, and then the resulting deviations of −0.4% and −2.7%, respectively, were calculated.