Polymer Film Depth Profiling - XPS

A PHI VersaProbe II XPS instrument equipped with an argon gas cluster ion gun is capable of being setup to depth profile thin or thick polymer films and in doing so maintain the expected chemistry throughout the film. Shown below (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) is an XPS depth profile of a 10 µm thick multi-layer polymer film that confirms the presence of polyethylene layers, nylon layers, and blended layers at the expected compositions. Depth profiling is used to verify the construction of thin film structures, detect contaminants in layers and at interfaces and observe inter-diffusion of layers.