ToF-SIMS ability to quantify surface chemical groups:: Correlation with XPS analysis 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 quantitative way in order to study chemical modifications produced by CO2 plasma surface treatments. Although there are many works devoted to the study of surface modification by plasma treatments, this contribution aims at proving the SIMS ability to quantify superficial functions. For that purpose, results obtained by spectrochemical titration (fluorescence labelling with thionine acetate), XPS measurement and ToF-SIMS analyses were compared. The results obtained with these three different techniques showed the same behaviour, i.e. a fast carboxylic functionalization of the polymer surface with the plasma treatment time. The good correlation between the spectrochemical titration and ToF-SIMS results brings out clearly the capacity of the ToF-SIMS technique to quantify surface chemical species. But this requires that we should be able to identify the secondary ions originating from the studied functions. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.