Evaluation of Adhesive Strength for Nano-Structured Thin Film by Scanning Acoustic Microscope

Abstract In recent years, nano-structured thin film systems are often applied in industries such as MEMS/NEMS device, optical coating, semiconductor or like this. Thin films are used for many and varied purpose to provide resistance to abrasion, erosion, corrosion, or high temperature oxidation and also to provide special magnetic or dielectric properties. Quite a number of articles to evaluate the characterization of thin film structure such as film density, film grain size, film elastic properties, and film/substrate interface condition were reported. Among them, the evaluation of film adhesive to substrate has been of great interest. In this study, we fabricated the polymeric thin film system with different adhesive conditions to evaluate the adhesive condition of the thin film. The nano-structured thin film system was fabricated by spin coating method. And then V(z) curve technique was applied to evaluate adhesive condition of the interface by measuring the surface acoustic wave(SAW) velocity by scanning acoustic microscope(SAM). Furthermore, a nano-scratch technique was applied to the systems to obtain correlations between the velocity of the SAW propagating within the system including the interface and the shear adhesive force. The results show a good correlation between the SAW velocities measured by acoustic spectroscope and the critical load measured by the nano-scratch test. Consequently, V(z) curve method showed potentials for characterizing the adhesive conditions at the interface by acoustic microscope.