Hygrothermal degradation of (3-glycidoxypropyl)trimethoxysilane films studied by neutron and X-ray reflectivity and attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy

Thin films of organosilanes have great technological importance in the areas of adhesion promotion, durability, and corrosion resistance. However, it is well-known that water can degrade organosilane films, particularly at elevated temperatures. In this work, X-ray and neutron reflectivity (XR and NR) were combined with attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) spectroscopy to study the chemical and structural changes within thin films of (3-glycidoxypropyl)trimethoxysilane (GPS) after exposure for various periods of time to air saturated with either D2O or H2O at 80 degrees C. For NR and XR, ultrathin (similar to 100 angstrom) films were prepared by spin-coating. Both D2O and H2O provide neutron scattering contrast with GPS. Variations in the neutron scattering length density (SLD) profiles (a function of mass density and atomic composition) with conditioning time were measured after drying the samples out and also swelled with H2O or D2O vapor at room temperature. For samples that were dried out prior to measurement, little or no change was observed for H2O conditioning up to 3.5 days, but large changes were observed after 30 days of conditioning. The range of conditioning time for this structural change was narrowed to between 4 and 10 days with XR. The SLD profiles indicated that the top portion of the GPS film was transformed into a thick low-density layer after conditioning, but the bottom portion showed little structural change. A previous NR study of as-prepared GPS films involving swelling with deuterated nitrobenzene showed that the central portion of the film has much lower cross-link density than the region nearest the substrate. The present data show that the central portion also swells to a much greater extent with water and hydrolyzes more rapidly. The chemical degradation mechanism was identified by IR as hydrolysis of siloxane bonds. For ATR-IR, GPS films were prepared by dip-coating, which resulted in a greater and more variable thickness than for the spin-coated samples. The IR spectra revealed an increase in vicinal silanol generation over the first 3 days of conditioning followed by geminal silanol generation. Thus, the structural change detected by NR and XR roughly coincided with the onset of geminal silanol generation. Finally, little change in the reflectivity data was observed for films conditioned with D2O at 80 degrees C for 1 month. This indicates that hydrolysis of Si-O-Si is much slower with D2O than with H2O.