Study of the benefits of the ToF-SIMS in solving industrial problems on glass pollution: two case studies

Profitability, productivity, reactivity, all these terms have become prime objectives for companies across industries. Manufacturing firms are more than ever subject to pressure in order to maximize production and therefore minimize as much as possible production line failures or defects. AGC Glass Europe is a world leader in production of glass, from windows, to wind- screens, to mirrors, etc. The AGC Technovation Centre, known as the research and de- velopment centre for the firm is located in Gosselies, Charleroi, making from Belgium an important hub for centralizing and solving all production issues faced by AGC Glass Europe. This paper, will look at two recent issues faced by AGC Glass Europe with regards to organic pollution in their production cycle of mirrors as well as windscreens and backlites, in order to assist AGC in preventing these issues to happen in the future. This research will in fact aim at setting a starting point for AGC towards a better understanding of the pollution issues they have encountered, with the objective to offer more information and perspectives for further analysis. Both cases required to recreate the pollution by ”in-lab” manipulations. The ”in-lab” polluted samples were then studied using the very sensitive SIMS surface technique based on time of flight (ToF-SIMS). Indeed, the aim of the study is to determine the contribution of this technique on the pollution detection. Other techniques were used in addition to the SIMS technique, namely infra-red spectrometry and surface tension measurement. ToF-SIMS is a very sensitive tool, and has shown great effectiveness in the two case studies by revealing the compounds responsible for the glass pollution in both cases, namely terpenoids for the first case and additives for the second case study. The in-depth analysis of the second case has also unveiled a ranking in the PE foils according to their polluting capacity. This has been done thanks to the IR analysis. These two cases have been identified as critical by AGC Glass Europe, and have been submitted for review to the AGC Technovation Centre. They will therefore be the main focus of this thesis