Nanoscale Thermomechanics of Wear-Resilient Polymeric Bilayer Systems

We explore the effect of an ultrathin elastic coating to optimize the mechanical stability of an underlying polymer film for nanoscale applications. The coating consists of a several nanometer thin plasma-polymerized norbornene layer. Scanning probes are used to characterize the system in terms of shear-force-induced wear and thermally assisted indentation. The layer transforms a weakly performing polystyrene film into a highly wear-resistive system, ideal for high-density and low-power data storage applications. The result can be understood from the indentation characteristics with a hot and sharp indenter tip. The latter gives rise to a deformation mode in the fully plastic regime, enabling a simple interpretation of the results. The softening transition and the yield stress of the system on a microsecond time scale and a nanometer size scale were obtained. We show that the plastic deformation is governed by yielding in the polystyrene sublayer, which renders the overall system soft for plastic deformat...