Surface Chemical Analysis of Cotton

XPS is one of the most well known techniques , allowing chemical analysis of a material surface to adepth of 3-5 nm(1). In XPS the diagnostic parameter is the electron bindingenergy(BE) , which is determined (Equation 1) by measuring the kinetic energy (KE) of photoelectrons emitted by x-raysphotons, of energy hʋ, impinging on the sample surface: KE = hʋ - BE [1] The value of the binding energy is not only characteristic ofthe emitting atom(i.e. enables elemental identification) butalso has a precise value, which is dependent on the chemical environment of that atom.Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (ToFSIMS)is also a surface sensitive technique able to probe the outer 1-2 nm of materials. It involves bombarding thematerials surface with a primary particle beam and analysing the emitted secondary ions. In addition to providing elementalinformation the technique is able to detect larger molecular species[1-3]. Thus in combination with XPS comprehensive characterisation of cotton fibre surfaces can be achieved