A Multi-Technique Characterization of Polymer Materials with XPS, UPS and REELS

Using a combination of surface analysis tools, different polymer materials were analysed using the Kratos AXIS Supra+. A common issue with XPS analysis is that the C 1s envelope can look relatively similar for different polymer materials, making them difficult to distinguish using XPS alone. Plasmon features, such as the π-π* transition, which give information related to the sp2 content of a material are also concealed by shifts between different C chemical states. Here, a combination of XPS, UPS and REELS are used as complimentary tools to help understand the chemistry of several polymer materials.