Polymer surface analysis: The leadership and contributions of David Briggs

David Briggs was a surface analysis pioneer. Starting in 1970 and continuing throughout his career, Dave used his expertise, vision, and ability to quickly master new surface analysis methods and solve important industrial problems. It certainly helped that he was an outstanding fundraiser in both industrial and academic settings, which ensured he always had an impressive array of the latest, most advanced surface analysis instrumentation at his disposal. He insisted on doing surface analysis correctly, and through his publications, databases, and books, he provided the community with the needed guidelines and methods to do so. In the 1970s, Dave's research was largely focused on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS, also known as electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis [ESCA]) characterization of polymers and catalysts. He added secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to his instrumentation arsenal in the 1980s and provided many of the key, pioneering publications that described how to use this method to characterize polymer surfaces. He also did some of the first surface analysis imaging experiments in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he continued his XPS and SIMS research on polymers and advanced the surface analysis community's ability to properly interpret surface analysis data through databases and advanced data processing methods. Dave continued to publish polymer and catalysis surface analysis papers in the 2000s, but also expanded his surface analysis studies to several other topics.