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

Display 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 Si nO2 n+2Al− and Si mHO2 m+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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]