Evaluation of adhesion between glass/epoxy composite substrate and copper foil for printed circuit board applications

Abstract

Adhesion between glass/epoxy composite substrate and copper foil was evaluated by 90° peeling test. Effect of fracture behavior and the peel strength on copper foil style was experimentally investigated using copper foils with various surface roughness. As mechanical anchoring effect increases with increased surface roughness, the surface roughness increased the surface roughness of copper foil strongly affected the peeling strength and local load variation during the test. The fracture behavior was characterized by secondary electron image and reflective electron image techniques of scanning electron microscopy (SEM). All of the specimens were found to fracture at the anchor points formed in the resin layer on the surface of the substrate. The experimental results were correlated to a formulation based on the theory of beams on elastic foundation, which is presented for predicting the adhesive strength in the adherend- adhesive system. In order to apply this formulation to a no adhesive system, such as FR-4/copper foil, an analytical model was proposed. In this model, a mixture phase of the copper with the surface resin in the substrate was regarded as the adhesive. The calculated results were in relatively good agreement with the experimental results. It was confirmed that the analysis model and evaluation method is useful to predict the peel strength due to the mechanical anchoring effect.