The edge effect in electron microscopical images is proposed to be measured in length units by using a ratio of the edge or near-to-edge signal enhancement or depletion integrated over all this feature along a line-scan across an edge, to the mean signal away from the edge, giving the result in length units, This approach is applied to quantification of the edge effect in Auger electron images, which is examined by using specimens with sharp edge terminated overlayer terraces, both chemically homogeneous and heterogeneous. The following combinations of overlayer/substrate materials were used: Si/Si of three different overlayer thicknesses, W/W and W/Si, and line-scans across the edges were recorded in both the low- and the high-energy Auger electrons mode, i.e. Si LMM and Si KLL or W NOO and W MNN. The experimental results are presented for the 3-, 10- and 20-keV primary electron energies. Owing to a low signal-to-noise ratio in the measured data, basic relations between the effect appearance and the experimental conditions were revealed only: on both Si and W homogeneous specimens with a surface step, the edge enhancement is the dominating subphenomenon while at the W terrace edge on the Si substrate, the 'penetration' of the radiation characteristic to both areas separated by the step, to the neighbouring feature, is observed as the most significant effect, The quantification has shown that the effect is, first of all, proportional to the step height, amounting to one-third to up to the full height, while the material dependence was weak, equally to the dependence on the Auger electron energy. The primary electron energy dependence is increasing in accordance with expectation. The results indicate that the effect cannot be modelled simply by the interaction volume cut by the surface step but phenomena such as subsurface electron channelling along the sidewall have to be taken into account.
