Study of innovative inorganic materials by surface-sensitive electron spectroscopies: from the steel surface to metal nanoparticles

The characterization of new materials with extremely reduced size or thickness, such as nanoparticles, planar geometry structures, thin films or multilayer composite materials, requires the use of extremely sensitive surface techniques, such as electron spectroscopies for chemical analysis (ESCA): X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). Current PhD work, carried out in the Surface Analysis Laboratory at the CRNISMN of Montelibretti (Italy), was aimed to study the properties of innovative inorganic materials by surface-sensitive electron spectroscopies and to develop a specific methodology suitable to analyze each kind of material. The thesis starts from brief historical notes on the development of surface physics, passing to the presentation of the theory and the basic principles of the main analytical techniques. Afterwards, it is presented a discussion of the methodologies used for the characterization of innovative materials, such as thin films, 2D materials, metal nanoparticles and special metal alloys. All these techniques have been widely used and developed in the experimental part of the doctoral thesis.