Towards chemical state resolution in regularized depth profiles derived from ARXPS data taken on plasma-oxidized polystyrene

ARXPS data obtained from a plasma-oxidized polystyrene sample were evaluated by means of 3-parameter and 10-parameter depth profile models, with and without regularization. It was found that the partially regularized 3-parameter model gave equivalent results compared to the regularized 10-parameter model, but requiring one fifteenth of the computational effort.