SOME ASPECTS OF THE FITTING OF XPS CORE SPECTRA OF POLYMERS

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.