XPS determination of oxygen‐containing functional groups on carbon‐fibre surfaces and the cleaning of these surfaces

Careful curve fitting is needed when using XPS to investigate oxidized functional groups on carbon‐fibre surfaces. This is important because the core regions often contain a number of overlapping features some of which are of low intensity, and the C 1s region is influenced by an asymmetric graphitic feature. The fitting approach used requires that the same content of oxygenated species must be obtained from both the C 1s and O 1s regions. The approach is used to analyse untreated fibres before and after cleaning.