In situ nanoscale mapping of the chemical composition of surfaces and 3D nanostructures by photoelectron spectromicroscopy

We propose a novel approach to extract quantitative chemical maps of surfaces with nanoscale resolution, from the analysis of data from x-ray photoemission electron microscopy, which is a minimally invasive technique. Our formulation allows us to extract chemical maps from the raw data even in cases when not all experimental parameters are well known or controlled. We illustrate our concept by the analysis of a ternary alloy with a nanoscale pattern, to achieve chemical maps of unprecedented quality.