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

The critical effects, the deformational stress from the elastic nature of a confined polymer layer has during the relaxation process on the buckling of thin metal-polymer bilayers systems, even above the temperature at which the polymer was in the liquid flow region, were reported. It was found that the final wrinkled waves take on the shape of wormlike islands. It was shown that the coarsening leading to the island structure was driven by the growth in amplitude of the dominant wave at the expense of less dominant ones. It was concluded that the pattern evolution of the very thin bilayer was dictated by the high temperature needed for buckling.