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-a-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 SinO2n+2Al- and SimHO2m+1-. The presence of these clusters suggests that analogous structures exist at the near surface regions of the samples. In a series of MCR analyses, two or three MCR components captured > 95% of the variance in the data for these samples. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.