Enhancement of adhesion between polyphenylene sulfide and copper by surface treatments

Abstract In this paper, we introduce methods which can effectively enhance the adhesion between polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) and bulk Cu. One of the methods involved the thermal evaporation of PPS to form a buffer layer on Cu and the other involved plasma treatment with reactive gases such as O 2 , H 2 , and N 2 on the PPS buffer layer. The adhesion strength of samples prepared by PPS thin film coating (∼26 MPa) was largely enhanced when compared to that of samples obtained by only etching (∼15 MPa). Among the samples obtained by plasma treatment using various reactive gases, the samples treated using H 2 plasma showed the best adhesion strength (of ∼32 MPa) in comparison to the other samples owing to the adhesion between hydrophobic surfaces.