Extracting chemical information from single-wavelength X-ray reflectivity data

Chemical information from X-ray reflectivity data

¹ Laboratoire Physico-Chimie des Matériaux, Département de Physique, Faculté des Sciences de Monastir, Université de Monastir, avenue de l’Environnement, 5019 Monastir, Tunisia
² LUNAM Université, Université du Maine, CNRS UMR 6283, Institut des Molécules et Matériaux du Mans, Département Polyméres, Colloïdes et Interfaces, avenue Olivier Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans Cedex 9, France
³ Institut Européen des Membranes, UMR-CNRS 5635, Université de Montpellier II, Place Eugène Bataillon, cc 047, 34095 Montpellier Cedex 5, France

^a e-mail: avderlee@univ-montp2.fr

Received: 7 March 2013
Revised: 28 March 2013
Accepted: 29 March 2013
Published online: 23 April 2013

Abstract

The possibilities for extracting chemical composition-related information from a singlewavelength X-ray reflectometry experiment are investigated. It is shown that the X-ray absorption of certain elements is sufficient to cause a significant effect on the reflectivity curve, which can be in turn exploited to determine its abundance in the thin film. The limitations are discussed using simulated data and the methodology is applied for the determination of the iodine concentration in iodine-treated thin polyaniline films. More generally the method appears to be very sensitive for the non-destructive determination of the weight percentage of metal nanoparticles in thin polymer films.