XPS study of metal/polymer interaction: Evaporated aluminum on polyvinyl alcohol polymer

Abstract

Abstract The interaction between in situ evaporated aluminum and plyvinyl alcohol (PVA) polymer at 300 K was studied by XPS. The aluminum condenses on the PVA surface by a Volmer–Weber (clustering) mechanism; it takes about a 3.7 monolayer deposition to nucleate clusters sufficiently large to exhibit core binding energies characteristic of bulk metal. Changes in the lineshapes of the C 1s and O 1s peaks and the appearance of a shifted peak in the Al 2p region were interpreted in terms of Al interactions with the surface alcoholic group HCOH, resulting in the formation of an interfacial organometallic complex exhibiting a stoichiometry of 1:1:1.5 for Al, C and O. Polar angle‐resolved XPS measurements and differences in the attenuation factors of the signals from the complex show that the Al is on top and is closer to the oxygen atoms.