Polymer elasticity-driven wrinkling and coarsening in high temperature buckling of metal-capped polymer thin films.

(Received 28 October 2003; published 13 July 2004)We report the critical effects the deformational stress from the elastic nature of a confined polymerlayer has during the relaxation process on the buckling of thin metal-polymer bilayer systems (less than100 nm) even above the temperature at which the polymer is in the liquid flow region. In contrast withwhat is generally believed, the dispersion force does not play a significant role in the buckling.We alsofind that the final wrinkled waves take on the shape of wormlike islands. The coarsening leading to theisland structure is driven by the growth in amplitude of the dominant wave at the expense of lessdominant ones.