INFLUENCE OF PLASMA PRETREATMENT OF POLYPROPYLENE ON THE ADHESION WITH ALUMINUM - AN AUGER SPECTROSCOPIC STUDY

The adhesion of polypropylene (PP) films with respect to an aluminium coating has been improved with the help of a non‐equilibrium plasma process, and the metal layer is deposited in situ immediately after pretreatment. Elsewhere, with the help of many complementary surface analyses (XPS, ISS, static SIMS), the modifications created by plasma treatment on the non‐metallized polymer have been explained partially. In this paper, the aluminium/PP interface has been studied by AES. The problems encountered during analyses of the metallized films are mentioned, which lead to the definition of the polymer–metal interface. It has been shown that independently of the pretreatment carried out on the polymer, the interface consists of an oxidized film of ∼4 nm thick. Furthermore, the role of the experimental conditions of the Auger analyses on the obtained profiles has been studied and discussed. Copyright © 1990 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.