Selective Study of Atoms in Rough Gold Surfaces by Means of Yoneda-XAFS

A new method of grazing incidence X-ray absorption spectroscopy using an off-specular reflection geometry referred to as Yoneda-XAFS is presented. Using an asymmetric setup, with the detector centered at the Yoneda peak, this technique is sensitive to lateral heterogeneities which typically occur at surfaces or interfaces. The Yoneda-XAFS technique was used for the ex situ investigation of a sputter deposited thin gold films on a float glass substrate. The data analysis is done in the framework of the distorted wave Born approximation (DWBA).