The Consequences of Choosing Incorrect Analytical Techniques When Characterizing Problem Polymer Surfaces!

This presentation describes a controversy where an end user was experiencing substantial adhesion issues with splicing tape on a PET polymer film material. The end user strongly suspected that some type of surface contamination was the root cause of the poor adhesion characteristics on the PET film product. The manufacturer of the PET film used FTIR, XRF, and sessile drop contact angle/surface energy measurements to characterize the surface of the film and claimed the analytical results indicated the product was free of any detectable surface contamination. Based on these analytical results, the PET film manufacturer absolved themselves of responsibility for the poor adhesion of the splicing tape to the PET film and contended that the end user’s own manufacturing process was at fault.

Subsequent external XPS measurements performed by a third party at the request of the end user indicated that the issue PET films had an unusually high concentration of PDMS silicone surface contamination present compared to non-issue PET films produced by another manufacturer, which had no XPS-detectable silicone present. XPS has a substantially higher surface sensitivity compared to FTIR and XRF and is the premier surface analytical technique for characterizing the chemistry of complex material surfaces and for solving challenging surface-related industrial problems. Although XPS produced overwhelming and irrefutable evidence as to the cause of the splicing tape adhesion problem on the issue PET films, the manufacturer of the defective material rejected the initial XPS analytical conclusions based on the claim that they have never heard of XPS! The way in which this contentious dispute was eventually settled will be described in this presentation. This presentation demonstrates the importance of always using a multi-technique approach for characterizing material surfaces as well as the consequences of choosing the correct technique(s) to best solve the problem at hand.