Structural modi®cation of poly(methyl methacrylate) by proton irradiation

A general survey is presented on the structural modi®cation of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) by proton implantation. The implanted PMMA ®lms were characterized by FT-IR attenuated total re¯ection (FT-IR ATR), Raman, Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), gel permeation chromatography (GPC) and surface pro®ling. The ion ¯uence of 350 keV protons ranged from 2 1014 to 1 1015 ions/cm2. The IR and Raman spectra showed the reduction of peaks from the pendant group of PMMA. The change of absorption and composition was observed by UV±VIS and RBS, respectively. These results showed that the pendant group is readily decomposed and eliminated by proton irradiation. The change of molecular weight distribution was also measured by GPC and G-value of scission was estimated to be 0.67. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.