| The research contained in this dissertation focuses on two areas of the surface studies of polymers, the surface property dependence of polymers on its processing procedure, and chemical reactions at polymer surfaces. The development of surface analysis methods is combined throughout this research. Major solid state surface sensitive techniques employed in this research included X-ray photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and attenuated total reflection (ATR) FTIR.; In the first aspect of this research, the surface chemical composition of polymer blends relevant to processing solvents is explored. The polymer blend studied was the homopolymer/block-copolymer system of polystyrene/poly(dimethylsiloxane)-co-polystyrene (PS/PDMS-co-PS). The solvent effects of binary solvent systems on the formation of polymer surfaces were investigated using two binary solvent systems, namely chloroform/cyclohexanone and chloroform/toluene. It has been found that the solvent composition has significant influences on the surface formation of polymeric materials.; The second aspect of this research concerns chemical reactions at polymer surfaces. Surface derivatization methods were developed for selectively labeling carboxylic acid end-groups of polyanhydrides, which enables XPS to quantitatively determine the surface molecular weight of polyanhydrides.; The hydrolytic degradation of PGA and other biodegradable polymers was investigated using ToF SIMS. It has demonstrated that the hydrolytic degradation products of biodegradable polymers can be observed directly in the ToF SIMS spectra. This technique can be used in monitoring the hydrolytic degradation of biodegradable polymers. The kinetics of the hydrolytic degradation of PGA in saline solutions at different pH conditions have been studied using this technique. Pseudo first order reaction kinetics have been established for the hydrolytic degradation at solid/liquid interfaces for PGA hydrolytic degradation in these aqueous saline solutions. |
