XPS in industry-Problems with binding energies in journals and binding energy databases

Experimentally measured BEs are commercially available in various forms, e.g. scientific journals, hand-books, internet based data-banks, computer-based data-banks of BEs or complete sets of actual spectra. This review addresses fundamental problems that exist in experimentally measured binding energies (BEs) stored in various numerical X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) data-banks, including, for example: (1) PHI Handbook of XPS (1979), (2) NIST SRD-20 XPS Database, v1.0-4.1 (1989-2017), (3) Wiley Practical Surface Analysis 1st and 2nd ed. (1990), (4) SASJ ComPro v12 and Data-bank (1990-2017), (5) JEOL Handbook of XPS (1991), (6) CRC Practical Handbook of Spectroscopy (1991), (7) PHI Handbook of XPS, 2nd Ed. (1992), (8) AVS Surface Science Spectra (1993-2017), (9) LaSurface Web Site Database - XPS (2001-2017), and (10) Biesinger XPSfitting website (2012-2017). The 3 major problems in all existing data-banks are due to: (a) the widespread use of different calibration energies, (b) the widespread use of different energy scales, and (c) the widespread use of a "user-defined" BE for the C Is peak attributed to hydrocarbon moieties. At the end of this review there is a list of recommendations for the design and content of future XPS data-banks. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.