ToF-SIMS imaging of PE/PP polymer using multivariate analysis

The distribution of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) in PE/PP blended-polymer film was determined by applying principal components analysis (PCA) and multivariate curve resolution (MCR) to time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS) imaging, together with preprocessing by pixel binning, normalization, and autoscaling to increase image contrast by reducing topographic and charge-distribution effects. The PE/PP distribution was confirmed by MVA conducted on the image data over static limit. The MCR score with normalized-autoscaling was found to give the PE/PP distribution distinctly. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.