GDOES depth profiling analysis and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy of a hard disk

Through the analysis of a commercial hard disk, it is demonstrated that glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES) is a powerful technique for depth profiling analysis of surfaces coated with multilayers of widely differing thicknesses, ranging from a few tens of nanometres to several tens of microns. This arises from its high depth resolution, resulting from highly uniform sputtering, and its wide thickness range, resulting from its high sputtering rate. The depth profile obtained agreed precisely with the layered structure of the disk revealed directly by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.