A Comparative Mass‐Spectrometric Study of Plasma‐ and Vacuum Ultraviolet Ablation of Selected Polymers

Abstract

Abstract Energetic photons (UV, VUV radiation and soft X rays), and particles (ions, electrons, metastable excited atoms) from inert gas plasmas possess sufficient energy to induce multiple bond scission reactions in the macromolecular chains of most polymers. As a result, volatile products of varying molecular weights escape from the polymers' surfaces; they can be captured and identified by mass spectrometry (MS). We report an MS‐based study of five commercial polymers, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polyamide that were exposed to inert gas (He, Ar) plasmas and to near‐monochromatic ( λ = 121.6 nm) VUV irradiation. For the cases of PE and PP, quantitative analyses of the most abundant reaction products (H 2 , C 1 –C 7 alkanes) are compared among the various polymer/excitation‐source cases, and with regard to literature data for γ irradiation. magnified image