Correlation between N 1s core level x-ray photoelectron and x-ray absorption spectra of amorphous carbon nitride films

This work presents a comparative analysis of the N 1s core level spectra, as measured by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), of amorphous CNx films which gives evidence of the existing correlation between the different components that constitute the respective spectra. After annealing, the contribution of XPS at 399.3 eV and the components of XAS at 399.6 and 400.8 eV are clearly enhanced. They are assigned to sp2 with two neighbors and to sp states of nitrogen. In addition, the XPS component at 401.3 eV is related to the XAS feature at 402.0 eV and has been assigned to sp2 nitrogen bonded to three carbon neighbors.