ToF-SIMS ability to quantify surface chemical groups: Correlation with XPSanalysis and spectrochemical titration

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) films were analysed by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) in a quantita tive way in order to study chemical modifications produced by CO2 plasma su rface treatments. Although there are many works devoted to the study of sur face modification by plasma treatments, this contribution aims at proving t he SIMS ability to quantify superficial functions. For that purpose, results obtained by spectrochemical titration (fluorescen ce labelling with thionine acetate), XPS measurement and ToF-SIMS analyses were compared. The results obtained with these three different techniques s howed the same behaviour, i.e. a fast carboxylic functionalization of the p olymer surface with the plasma treatment time. The good correlation between the spectrochemical titration and ToF-SIMS res ults brings out clearly the capacity of the ToF-SIMS technique to quantify surface chemical species. But this requires that we should be able to ident ify the secondary ions originating from the studied functions. Copyright (C ) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.