The type of information attainable in this manner is illustrated in the carbon 1 s spectra of Figure 5. The main advantage of XPS for many polymer applications is, however, obtained from the peak energy and peak fitting of the C 1s spectrum, as this provides chemical information that is superior to that provided by other characteristic spectra of polymer constituents. Combination of XPS with time-of-flight SIMS, which provides molecular specificity, improves the information attainable. An example of the segregation of a diblock copolymer during annealing is shown in Figure 9 where the quantitative nanostructure of the PDMS segregation to the surface is determined by analysis of the peak shape. All the constituent elements of organic polymers, with the exception of hydrogen, are detectable and have chemical shifts that indicate their chemical environment. XPS provides a powerful method for the surface analysis of polymers and is employed routinely for this purpose in many laboratories around the world. Tougaard, in Encyclopedia of Analytical Science (Second Edition), 2005 Polymer Analysis XPS can also be used for the identification of metallic NPs that do not have strong plasmon resonance absorption, such as palladium and platinum. XPS is used to examine the valence of the resulting AgNPs while it also provides further information regarding the structure of AgNPs encapsulated in the organic network ( Mohammadlou et al., 2016). For example, AgNPs can be investigated by XPS to characterize the nature of the surfactant chemisorbed to the surface. Since each element produces a characteristic set of XPS peaks at characteristic binding energy values, this technique can directly identify each element that exists on the surface of the material being analyzed ( Noruzi, 2015).
In this technique, the sample is irradiated with X-ray beams while the kinetic energy and number of electrons that escape from the surface of the material are simultaneously measured. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a surface chemical analysis technique that can be used in elemental analysis of the sample and determination of element speciation. Mojtaba Salouti, Fatemeh Khadivi Derakhshan, in Advances in Phytonanotechnology, 2019 7.2.5 X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)