HAXPES at the dawn of the synchrotron radiation age

Abstract

Some of the earliest X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS) studies with high-energy X-rays took place in the 1970s as a way of demonstrating the feasibility of using synchrotron radiation from a multi-GeV storage ring to study materials. These developments took place at the SPEAR storage ring at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and showed that synchrotron radiation could be tamed but that the technologies of the time would not allow hard X-ray photoemission to become a tool for routine experiments. However, soft X-rays did fulfill that promise and dominated the XPS research for the next several decades with important contributions to the study of surfaces and interfaces. With the advent of second and particularly third generation synchrotron sources, XPS with high-energy X-rays has become a practical tool for the study of bulk properties and buried interfaces. The development of these techniques will be discussed as will the need for both hard and soft X-rays to provide complimentary details on bulk and surface properties of materials.