Nitrogen-oxygen double bonds, Raman

Whereas the proton transfer does not effect the stochiometry of the final PI when water is eliminated in the imidization reaction (fig. 3F), addition of an excess ODA molecule to polyamic acid could lead to the imine type crosslink formation schematically shown in figure 3G. This would lead to a deficiency of carbonyl oxygen atoms for vapor deposited polyimide and is consistent with our analysis. Mack et al. [16] proposed imine crosslink formation from their Raman spectroscopic studies for vapor deposited polyimides with excess ODA. In accordance with this model we attribute the low binding energy shoulder in the polyimide Nls line (figure 4c) to double bonded nitrogen species. However, the model gives no explanation for the carbonyl deficiency found in spin deposited polyamic acid and polyimide. In this case no excess of ODA is observed and only a very weak shoulder has been reported for the Nls line [4,11]. 

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