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Photoelectron spectroscopy on organic surfaces: X‐ray degradation of oxygen‐plasma‐treated and chemically reduced poly(propylene) surfaces in comparison to conventional polymers
Author(s) -
Gross Thomas,
Kühn Gerhard,
Unger Wolfgang E. S.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
surface and interface analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1096-9918
pISSN - 0142-2421
DOI - 10.1002/sia.3024
Subject(s) - x ray photoelectron spectroscopy , degradation (telecommunications) , context (archaeology) , polymer , analytical chemistry (journal) , oxygen , chemistry , sputtering , plasma , materials science , chemical engineering , thin film , organic chemistry , nanotechnology , telecommunications , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , computer science , engineering , biology
The X‐ray‐induced sample damage during mono XPS analysis of an oxygen‐plasma‐oxidized and subsequently wet‐chemically reduced poly(propylene) film was investigated as a showcase for plasma‐modified or plasma‐deposited samples. By doing this, the degradation index approach as introduced by Beamson and Briggs in the Scienta ESCA300 high‐resolution XPS database of organic polymers has been adopted. As to be expected, the sample degrades by loosing oxygen as revealed by observation of decreasing O/C and COR/C sum ratios. However, the X‐ray degradation indices are definitely higher than those of conventional reference polymers. Moreover, the COR/C sum degradation index is significantly higher in comparison with one obtained for the O/C ratio. In that context, there is no difference between the plasma sample and a conventional poly(vinyl alcohol) polymer. It is concluded that for reliable quantitative surface chemical analysis, the quality of spectra in terms of acquisition times must be optimized aimed to a minimization of X‐ray degradation. Finally, it is proposed to describe the photon flux of an X‐ray gun in an XPS experiment, which defines the degradation rate at the end, by using the sample current simply measured with a carefully grounded sputter‐cleaned reference silver sample. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.