Quantitative surface analysis of styrene–butadiene copolymers using time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry

Abstract

Abstract The potential applicability of time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF SIMS) as an independent quantitative technique has been studied using a more complicated copolymer system: styrene‐butadiene copolymer. The complication of this system is that the characteristic SIMS peaks are not unique to each monomer. It has been found that quantitative information can be obtained from the relative SIMS intensities of certain characteristic peaks, i.e. m / z = 63, 89, 103 and 115 for styrene and 53, 67 and 79 for butadiene. In particular, the intensity ratios A /( A + B ), where A and B represent, respectively, the above characteristic peaks of styrene and butadiene, have been found to be linearly related to the bulk styrene molar concentration. These results suggest that a sensitivity factor that is constant and independent of the copolymer composition can be defined for these peaks. However, this conclusion cannot be generalized for other SIMS peaks, such as m / z = 77, 91 and 105.