Adhesion between Copper and Amorphous Silica: A Reactive Molecular Dynamics Study

Abstract

Interactions between metals and oxide glasses are indispensable owing to their ubiquitous usages ranging from microelectronics to industrial production processes. In this study, adhesion between metal copper and amorphous silica (a-SiO2) was investigated as a primitive metal/oxide interaction by using reactive molecular dynamics simulations. According to uniaxial and shear deformation simulations on copper/a-SiO2 layered models, we found that adhesion between a-SiO2 and crystalline or amorphous copper layers is very weak. Indeed, the interlayer is the breakable surface because the fracture stress is much less than the yield stress of the matrix oxide. Contrarily, since a sufficiently oxidized copper layer binds stronger to a-SiO2, the fracture surface varies from the copper/a-SiO2 interface to in-between the oxidized/crystalline copper layers. It is concluded from the simulations that the oxidization improves adhesion between metals and oxide glasses for bonding processes, whereas it causes defects or imp...