A ToF-SIMS/MVA approach to identify phase segregation in blends of incompatible but extremely similar resins

This work presents a data analysis extension to a well-established methodology for the assessment of organic coatings using imaging time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). Such an approach produced results that can be analysed using a multivariate analysis (MVA) procedure that performs the simultaneous processing of spatially and chemically related datasets. The coatings consist of two commercial resins that yield extremely similar spectra and there are no peaks of sufficient intensity that are uniquely diagnostic of either material to provide an unambiguous identification of each. In order to resolve the problem, in addition to microtome-based sample preparation steps of tapers for the analysis through sample thickness, standard samples in cured and uncured conditions are introduced and measured in the same fashion as the specimens under investigation. The resulting ToF-SIMS imaging datasets have been processed using non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF), which enabled identification of phase separation in the cured coatings.