Photostability of polymers is an important issue since most polymers tend to loose their original properties upon exposure to light, especially to ultraviolet radiation. Polycarbonates are widely used industrial materials because of their excellent properties, which includes transparency, high tensile strength, impact resistance and rigidity. In this paper, we present results on 172 nm photodegradation of polycarbonate (PC) films. PC films of 50 mum thickness were irradiated for up to 20 min using a Xe-2* excimer lamp system. Ex situ UV visible spectroscopic investigation of the treated films revealed the appearance of two strong absorption bands at 279 and 317 nm and a third broad band centred around 380 nm whose intensity increased linearly with illumination time. The morphological changes were characterised by atomic force microscopy and resulted in a gradually increasing roughness, being a linear function of irradiation time. The interpretation of the observed chemical degradation is based on attenuated total reflection IR and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic measurements which show cleavage of the aromatic C-C and carboxylic CO-O bonds together with some nitrogen incorporation into the surface layer of the irradiated films. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.