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Near Ambient Pressure NAP XPS

The near ambient pressure (NAP) X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) system is for high-throughput chemical surface analysis under application relevant environmental conditions.

The system overcomes barriers of traditional XPS systems by enabling analyses at a wide range of atmospheres ranging from 10-7 mbar up to 100 mbar. Via three separate, mass-flow controlled gas inlets, the system allows to create a wide range of reactive environments and hence to directly probe energy materials and devices under application relevant conditions. Via a sample holder with built-in laser heating, the tool allows direct probing of samples at temperatures up to 1000C in these atmospheres, enabling for instance new insights into material growth and discovery in particular for nanomaterials relevant to EE ICT.

There is a built-in plasma cleaning and specific holder design to minimise cross-contamination and a horizontal sample loading. Sample loading is also possible without going through high vacuum, so a wide range of materials can be probed including liquids, biological materials, ceramics, polymers and materials with high vapour pressures.

The system uses a SPECS XR 50 MF X-ray Source, μ-FOCUS 600 X-ray monochromator and differentially pumped PHOIBOS 150 1D-DLD NAP analyser. The system also has scannable focused extractor type ion source for depth profiling. The system will be run as an XPS facility together with existing standard UHV-based XPS/UPS system.

If your research interests require controlled deposition of any of the above materials or you would like to combine functional materials in novel ways and have any questions on the tool’s capabilities please contact the academic lead Professor Stephan Hofmann (sh315@cam.ac.uk) or the technical contact Dr Shaoliang Guan ( sg2156@cam.ac.uk ) in the Department of Physics.