Theoretical analysis of two-dimensional buckling patterns of thin metal-polymer bilayer on the substrate

Abstract

Theoretical analysis based on a nondegenerate perturbation method is presented for two-dimensional buckling patterns of a thin metal-capped polymer bilayer on a rigid substrate. The analysis reveals that isotropic one-dimensional buckling mode has the lowest free energy, which contrasts previous work on the buckling of a thin metal film on the semi-infinitely thick polymer layer studied by Chen and Hutchinson [J. Appl. Mech. 71, 597 (2004)]. In the low stress region, however, checkerboard buckling mode has the lowest energy. Herringbone buckling mode is shown to be represented by a linear combination of the checkerboard mode and the isotropic one-dimensional mode. Disorder parameter values are given for these various two-dimensional buckling modes on the basis of an envelope function. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.