Obtaining elemental concentration profile of sample

An apparatus comprising means adapted for carrying out steps of:

• preparing a sample to have a bevelled section exposing parts of said sample at a range of depth;
• obtaining an elemental intensity profile by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy as a function of said range of depth;
• fitting said profile to an analytical function;
• separating said profile into a plurality of slices of a predetermined equal thickness;
• and
• evaluating a final elemental concentration value for each said slice of in turn starting from that corresponding to a thinnest part of said sample, where the final elemental concentration value for each said slice is determined to be a total elemental concentration value extracted from said analytical function, minus a contribution of every preceding slice.

A computer readable storage medium having encoded thereon a set of instructions which, upon being executed by a computer, carry out steps of:

• preparing a sample to have a bevelled section exposing parts of said sample at a range of depth;
• obtaining an elemental intensity profile by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy as a function of said range of depth;
• fitting said profile to an analytical function;
• separating said profile into a plurality of slices of a predetermined equal thickness;
• and
• evaluating a final elemental concentration value for each said slice of in turn starting from that corresponding to a thinnest part of said sample, where the final elemental concentration value for each said slice is determined to be a total elemental concentration value extracted from said analytical function, minus a contribution of every preceding slice.