The seminal work of Graham Beamson and Dave Briggs in their "High Resolution XPS of Organic Polymers – The Scienta ESCA300 Database" has been utilized since 1992 as an invaluable resource for the XPS analysis of polymers and organic materials. A summary of carbon 1s binding energies for organic functional groups from this work are presented here. The original work calibrates the binding energy scale to 285.0 eV for aliphatic carbon C 1s. The values presented here are now calibrated to 284.8 eV for aliphatic carbon, in line with recent results [2].
Table 1. Summary of the mean, maximum, and minimum carbon 1s binding energies for different organic functionalities according to the work of Beamson and Briggs [1]. Binding energy calibration presented here have been adjusted to the main aliphatic C 1s peak at 284.8 eV.
The effects of various functional groups on beta carbon binding energies can be significant (Table 2). Note that, in this context, the alpha carbon is the carbon directly attached to the functional group, and the beta carbon is attached to the alpha carbon. These effects have been included in the refinement of the binding energy value for the aliphatic carbon component in adventitious carbon [2].
[1] G. Beamson, D. Briggs, High Resolution XPS of Organic Polymers - The Scienta ESCA300 Database, Wiley Interscience, 1992, Appendices 1 and 2.
[2] L.H. Grey, H.-Y. Nie, M.C. Biesinger, Appl. Surf. Sci. 653 (2024) 159319.
