Acquiring an AES Depth Profile

To find out more about depth profiles, click here .

  1. Make sure that AES is selected as the acquisition technique.

  2. Set the AES elastic peak if you have changed or moved the sample. Click here to see the procedure for acquiring an elastic peak.

  3. If you are using an analog multiplier supply such as the model 20-075, you must re-set the multiplier voltage before acquiring a depth profile. Click here to see the procedure When you have re-set the multiplier voltage, make sure the AugerScan document for the depth profile is the active window, display the Depth Profile Settings dialog box, then skip to step 6.
    (If you are using a digital multiplier supply such as the model 32-100, we recommend that you re-check the multiplier plateau voltage on a monthly basis because as a multiplier ages, it requires a higher voltage to produce the same amount of signal. Click here to view the procedure for acquiring the multiplier gain curve to determine the multiplier plateau voltage.)

  4. Select the New Depth Profile command from the Acquisition menu.

  5. In the Select Element dialog box, click on the elements for which you want to acquire the depth profile. (If the element you want isn’t in the list, click on the New Element button to add the element to the list.) Click on OK to close the Select Element dialog box.

  6. Define the acquisition settings in the Depth Profile Settings dialog box. Note: If you didn’t include all the elements you wanted to when you defined the elements in the depth profile, click on the Add button in this dialog box. Use the What’s This Help to determine the appropriate values for each field.

  7. Click on the Acquire command button to begin acquiring the depth profile.

  8. Once your depth profile is displayed, you can expand the X-axis scale if necessary. You can also view individual regions and cycles .

Once you’ve acquired the depth profile, you can continue working with the data, thereby “transforming” it. This includes smoothing, differentiating, tracking and marking, annotating, and calculating atomic concentrations. Click here for more information about raw and transformed data. We recommend that you save your data before you transform it in any way because some operations result in permanent changes to the data that cannot be undone.

Click here to see a list of related topics.