Assessment of the frequency and nature of erroneous x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses in the scientific literature
By George H. Major, Tahereh G. Avval, Behnam Moeini, G. Pinto, Dhruv Shah, Varun Jain, V. Carver, W. Skinner, T. Gengenbach, C. Easton and 4 more. 2020
150 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This study was undertaken to understand the extent and nature of problems in x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) data reported in the literature. It first presents an assessment of the XPS data in three high-quality journals over a six-month period. This analysis of 409 publications showing XPS spectra provides insight into how XPS is being used, identifies the common mistakes or errors in XPS analysis, and reveals which elements are most commonly analyzed. More than 65% of the 409 papers showed fitting of XP spectra. An ad hoc group (herein identified as “the committee”) of experienced XPS analysts reviewed these spectra and found that peak fitting was a common source of significant errors. The papers were ranked based on the perceived seriousness of the errors, which ranged from minor to major. Major errors, which, in the opinion of the ad hoc committee, can render the interpretation of the data meaningless, occurred when fitting protocols ignored underlying physics and chemistry or contained major errors in the analysis. Consistent with other materials analysis data, ca. 30% of the XPS data or analysis was identified as having major errors. Out of the publications with fitted spectra, ca. 40% had major errors. The most common elements analyzed by XPS in the papers sampled and researched at an online database, include carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and titanium. A scrutiny of the papers showing carbon and oxygen XPS spectra revealed the classes of materials being studied and the extent of problems in these analyses. As might be expected, C 1s and O 1s analyses are most often performed on sp2-type materials and inorganic oxides, respectively. These findings have helped focus a series of XPS guides and tutorials that deal with common analysis issues. The extent of problematic data is larger than the authors had expected. Quantification of the problem, examination of some of the common problem areas, and the development of targeted guides and tutorials may provide both the motivation and resources that enable the community to improve the overall quality and reliability of XPS analysis reported in the literature.
Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Radiation, Surfaces, Coatings and Films
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ac5e729cb9d14e16b61865f2caecd1b013399fb1
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In Surfaces, Coatings and Films
Citations in the corpus
- Comments on the XPS Analysis of Carbon Materials (2021, background): “The fit ing of the graphitic C (1s) envelope is one of the ost co on errors encountered in the literature [15], and the asymmetric shape is something commonly ignored in may published papers.”
- Systematic and collaborative approach to problem solving using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (2021, unknown): “…has been developing for decades with recent advancements made in operator bias-free methods [6 – 8] as well as understanding and quantifying the underlying (un)systematic errors [9,10] as well as developing the overall experiment planning, data acquisition and interpretation strategies [11,12].”