Abstract
The plasma duty cycle, in addition to power and exposure time, affects the surface atomic composition of thiophene plasma-treated paper. The elemental carbon and sulfur concentration increased from 56.7% to 78.6% and 0% to 13.4%, respectively, while oxygen decreased from 43.3% to 8.0% with the plasma treatment. Relatively large variations in the deposited film-like layer composition could be realized by changing plasma external parameters. The high-resolution (HR) C1s spectra of the thiophene plasma-treated paper clearly exhibit plasma-induced rearrangements and new sulfur functionalities on the paper surface. After a five-hour ex situ doping of thiophene plasma-treated papers with iodine, conductivity ranging from δ = 4.2E-2 to 4.1 S/cm was obtained. The low relative F/C atomic ratio after TFAA derivatization indicates that no hydroxyl groups were present on the paper surface after the thiophene plasma treatment.