Pure and PDMS contaminated PS oligomers films were investigated both by time-of-flight static secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SSIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
The secondary ion spectra from the PDMS contaminated PS oligomers were almost completely related to PDMS. XPS revealed a PDMS contamination characterized by a silicon surface concentration of 6 at.%. Obviously siloxane contaminants existing on the surface of a silicon wafer may diffuse towards the PS oligomers outermost surface resulting in a rather high PDMS surface concentration of about 85%. Due to the known differences in the information depth and sensitivity of SSIMS and XPS very different detection limits are to be considered.
In elimination of siloxane contaminants by ultrasonication in hexane was found to be an effective way. Another common organic cleaning procedure, which is ultrasonication in trichloroethylene (TCE), subsequently in isopropanol and finally in acetone was found to be ineffective for cleaning of PDMS contaminated silicon wafers.
Plasma deposited ethylene/allylamine and styrene/allylamine copolymer films were prepared and analyzed using XPS, NEXAFS and ToF-SIMS. The relative partial flow rate of the each monomer was used as the variable deposition parameter, while the other deposition parameters were kept constant at optimized values for the retention of functional groups. The effect of the variation in the relative partial flow rates of co-monomers on various chemical aspects of the films like unsaturation, nitrogen retention and branching was investigated revealing several non-linear correlations. This observation is taken as an indication for chemical copolymerization processes during film deposition. An attempt is made to compare these non-linear correlations with approaches which have been developed for classic radical copolymerization processes. The aging behavior of these plasma copolymer films was also studied; the results indicated a stabilization against oxidation in comparison to the aging of allylamine plasma homopolymers.