Nanomechanical study of polymer‐polymer thin film interface under applied service conditions

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Single layer and multilayer polymer thin film coating on polymer substrate are gaining significant importance in different industries. The quantitative and qualitative estimation of interface response for thin film coating under different service conditions is significantly important from the perspective of modeling and designing novel materials. However, to characterize an interface between the soft polymer layer and soft polymer substrate is challenging because of the confinement effect, surface roughness, the viscoelastic nature of the polymers involved, and most importantly, the comparable mechanical properties of soft polymeric film and polymer substrate. Nanoindentation technique was applied in this work to find out the mechanical response of thin film PMMA (100–200 nm) and Epoxy interfaces of different interfacial strengths. Interfaces of different strengths were obtained by exposing the film‐substrate system to different service conditions. It has been observed from this study that pile‐up plays a major role in finding out the mechanical response of the interfaces of different strengths. The hardness was observed to increase as the interfacial strength reduces. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 43532.

This publication has 34 references indexed in Scilit: