Time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry of wet and dry chemically treated display glass surfaces

Abstract

AbstractDisplay glasses meet the demands of the flat panel display industry vis‐à‐vis their composition, flatness, and forming processes. Here, we report the high‐resolution time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF‐SIMS) characterization of Corning® EAGLE XG®, a widely used display glass, and subsequent chemometric analyses of these data. Samples analyzed included the as‐formed glass, fracture surfaces from remelt bars, and as‐formed surfaces subsequently exposed to process‐relevant treatments, including strong acids and bases, two industrial detergents, and an atmospheric‐pressure plasma treatment. Elemental signals in the positive ion ToF‐SIMS spectra respond to surface treatments. Acidic conditions leach non‐silica components from the surfaces, while basic treatments extract these species less efficiently. The detergents leave residues of Na+ and K+. The atmospheric pressure (AP) plasma treatment had little effect on the surface composition, while the melt surface differs significantly from the bulk fracture surface. Above ca. 75 m/z, the negative ion spectra are dominated by two series of homologous cluster ions with compositions of SinO2n+2Al− and SimHO2m+1H−. The presence of these clusters suggests that analogous structures exist at the near surface regions of the samples. In a series of multivariate curve resolution (MCR) analyses, two or three MCR components captured >95% of the variance in the data for these samples.