Jörg M. Stockmann

1 Introduction Analysing materials composed of multiple elements with spectroscopic techniques, such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) or electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), can be challenging due to spectral overlap particularly for elements with close atomic numbers.

1 Introduction Over the last four decades, companies and research institutes have moved from pure surface coatings to the production of thin homogeneous layers and the manufacture and coating of thin microstructured areas [1-3]. These microstructures and coatings can be found in many technical and scientific fields like microelectronics and optoelectronics, solar cells and lab-on-chip-systems [4].