An Organic Reference Specimen: Polyacrylonitrile Film Deposited on Oxidizable Metals by Electro-Polymerization

Surface investigations of organic materials require the provision of reference specimens for calibrating experimental equipment. Because of their specific properties (purity, reproducibility, well-known molecular structure and orderly inter-molecular structure, electronic properties associating conductive and insulating behaviour, quality of the film-to-metal bound), polyacrylonitrile films obtained through electro-polymerization on oxidizable metal cathodes (Fe, Ni, Cu) may be used as a first type of reference sample. Experimental results, obtained by various surface investigation techniques are presented, and their validity evaluated