3 research outputs found
Nanotextured Polymer Substrate for Flexible and Mechanically Robust Metal Electrodes by Nanoimprint Lithography
Nanotextured Polymer Substrate for Flexible and Mechanically Robust Metal Electrodes by Nanoimprint Lithography
Metal thin film electrodes on flexible
polymer substrates are inherently unstable against humidity and mechanical
stresses because of their poor adhesion properties. We introduce a
novel approach for improving the adhesion characteristics of metal–polymer
interface based on the nanostructuring of the polymer substrate by
using nanoimprint lithography. The adhesion characteristics of metal–polymer
interface were measured by accelerated test, cyclic bending test and
double cantilever beam (DCB) test. The interface of Au/Ti dual layer
thin film and nanoimprinted PMMA substrate shows over 2.03 and 1.95
times higher adhesion energy (<i>G</i><sub>c</sub>) than
that of Au/Ti dual layer thin film and plane PMMA substrate in air
and wet environments, respectively. The adhesion energy between metal
thin film and polymer substrate was dramatically improved by the increased
surface roughness and mechanical interlocking effect of numerous nanoscale
anchors at the edges of nanoimprinted surface, which was verified
by both experiment and numerical analysis