X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) or Electron Spectroscopy for Chemical Analysis (ESCA) offers many different levels of information, to be gained from any material surface, particularly from polymers. Actually, it appears as the most powerful non-destructive characterization techniques to study this last material category. Analysis of core level binding energies (i. e. measurement of chemical shifts) and core level intensities, use of shake-up satellites, depth profiles and spatially resolved studies, and finally valence band spectra, will be shown to produce as many different but complementary keys to learn about the atomic, chemical and structural composition of macromolecule surfaces.
