Coloring of radiation damages in ion‐implanted poly(aryl ether ether ketone): LiCl uptake and thermal desorption

Poly(aryl ether ether ketone) (PEEK) films irradiated with 2 MeV O⁺ and Ar⁺ ions to fluences in the range 10¹¹–10¹³ cm^?2 were treated with 5 mol/L LiCl aqueous solution at 100°C for 1 h. After removal of excessive, weakly bound LiCl the samples were annealed at temperatures from 50 to 250°C for 1 h to check the mobility of the incorporated LiCl. The amount of incorporated LiCl and its depth profile were determined using the neutron depth‐profiling (NDP) technique, which makes use of the ⁶Li(n_th, ⁴He) ³H nuclear reaction. Up to the maximum annealing temperature no significant escape of the LiCl was observed. With increasing annealing temperature, a gradual migration of LiCl dopant toward the sample surface was observed on the irradiated PEEK samples. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 83: 2780–2784, 2002; DOI 10.1002/app.10253