Some techniques to characterize multilayers and their interfaces

We describe some destructive and non-destructive techniques that can be useful to examine multilayers and particularly their interfaces. The presented non-destructive techniques allow obtaining the electron structure of the sample and then determine the chemical states of the elements in the multilayer from the analysis of the occupied (x-ray emission and photoemission spectroscopies) or unoccupied (x-ray absorption or electron energy loss spectroscopies) states. Among the destructive techniques we introduce secondary ion mass spectrometry and transmission electron microscopy that bring some information about the structural quality of the samples.