Determination of chemical structure by means of XPS through least-squa
res fitting of core lines is a widely used method. We present a model
for the description of XPS core lines from polymers under simultaneous
consideration of the lineshape and the inelastic background. For prop
er consideration of the background, a model loss function with free pa
rameters was included in the fitting process. The free parameters of t
he model can be found by least-squares fitting. Using this procedure,
XPS core lines of many polymers can be described over a range of 25 eV
, which will be demonstrated for selected polymers (PcI, PGMA, PVMK, P
PG, PVME, PAA, PE). The model could be easily modified to fit other cl
asses of materials. It will be shown how statistical analysis of the d
ata can be used to evaluate the fitting results. (C) 1998 John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.