22085
2005, 109, 22085-22088 Published on Web 11/05/2005
Ultralow Energy Ion Beam Surface Modification of Low Density Polyethylene Martyn J. Shenton,† James W. Bradley,‡ Jaap A. van den Berg,§ David G. Armour,§ and Gary C. Stevens*,† Polymer Research Centre, UniVersity of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK, Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, UniVersity of LiVerpool, Brownlow Hill, LiVerpool, L69 3GJ, UK, and Joule Physics Laboratory, Institute of Materials Research, UniVersity of Salford, Salford, M5 4WT, UK ReceiVed: August 23, 2005; In Final Form: October 24, 2005
Ultralow energy Ar+ and O+ ion beam irradiation of low density polyethylene has been carried out under controlled dose and monoenergetic conditions. XPS of Ar+-treated surfaces exposed to ambient atmosphere show that the bombardment of 50 eV Ar+ ions at a total dose of 1016 cm-2 gives rise to very reactive surfaces with oxygen incorporation at about 50% of the species present in the upper surface layer. Using pure O+ beam irradiation, comparatively low O incorporation is achieved without exposure to atmosphere (∼13% O in the upper surface). However, if the surface is activated by Ar+ pretreatment, then large oxygen contents can be achieved under subsequent O+ irradiation (up to 48% O). The results show that for very low energy (20 eV) oxygen ions there is a dose threshold of about 5 × 1015 cm-2 before surface oxygen incorporation is observed. It appears that, for both Ar+ and O+ ions in this regime, the degree of surface modification is only very weakly dependent on the ion energy. The results suggest that in the nonequilibrium plasma treatment of polymers, where the ion flux is typically 1018 m-2 s-1, low energy ions (100 eV in ref 10, and Ar+ ions in the range 0.5-5 keV.11,12 This is in contrast to ion and electron energies in nonequilibrium plasmas that are typically in the 1 to 100 eV range.13 However, by extracting ions from a plasma, Groning et al.14 used low-energy ion beams at energies
