Vacuum Ultraviolet Irradiation of Polymers

The interest in incoherent sources for wavelength selective photochemistry has increased lately, but little is still known about the behavior of polymers when exposed to far UV and vacuum UV (VUV) radiation, for example that emitted from low-pressure plasmas. In order to study VUV-UV effects on several polymers (polyethylene - PE, polystyrene - PS, hexatriacontane - HTC, polymethylmethacrylate - PMMA and polycarbonate - PC), we used the wellcharacterized emissions from hydrogen and hydrogen/argon mixture plasmas as light sources. Mass changes were measured in-situ using a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM); irradiated samples were analyzed ex-situ by XPS, spectroscopic ellipsometry, and AFM.