Surface Analysis of Plasma-treated PDMS by XPS and Surface Voltage Decay

Surface states of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) treated by plasma were investigated by the analysis by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and surface voltage decay. Plasma treatment causes the silica-like(SiO$\_$x/, x=3∼4) oxidative layer, which is confirmed with XPS, and lowers surface resistivity from 1.78$\times$1014 Ω/square to 1.09$\times$10$\^$13/ Ω/square with increasing the plasma treatment time. By measuring the decay time constant of surface voltage, the calculated surface resistivity was compared with the value directly measured by a voltage-current method, so good agreement between two methods was obtained. It was observed that the plasma treatment led to decrease of the thermal activation energy of the surface conduction from 31.0 kJ/mol of untreated specimen to 21.8 kJ/mol. It is found that our results allow the examination of effects of plasma on electrical properties of PDMS.