26.06.2020 •

Thin Film Adhesion of Flexible Electronics Influenced by Interlayers

Abstract

With the emergence of flexible electronics in the fields of medical sensors and foldable displays, there is a need to understand the interfacial behavior between active conducting elements and compliant polymer substrates, on which the devices are fabricated. Compression induced delamination is one technique that can be utilized to assess interfacial adhesion of flexible substrates that only uses the resulting buckle dimensions to quantitatively evaluate adhesion. It is found that spontaneous buckles formed in the Au film without the interlayer after deposition, while external loading is required to delaminate the Au film with the Ta adhesion layer indicating a higher adhesion energy.