Background
ISO 14976:1998 is an ASCII text file format to store spectra and spectral images developed by ISO TC 201, the International Standards Organisation’s Technical Committee for Surface Chemical Analysis.
The format was developed in 1998 for XPS, Auger and quadrupole SIMS (SIMS with a linear m/z axis). The formal definition of the format is available from the ISO website. Since the format is text-based there is a practical limit to the amount of data that can be stored. Too many data points will result in a very large file.
The development of the format was partly driven through VAMAS TWA2 and so the format is often simply referred to as the ‘VAMAS format’. However, the two formats are not exactly the same in that the ISO version can only store a single spectrum, while the VAMAS version can store multiple spectra.
A jourmal publication - Surface and Interface Analysis, VOL. 13, 63-122 (1988) - contains all the information required to read and write the VAMAS version of the format. This also includes example source code to read the format in a range of programming languages popular in the 1980s.
Software
This format is common in XPS and some instrument vendors can export files to it.
CasaXPS, a popular data analysis package for XPS, can read these files.