Transition from dislocation glide to creep controlled damage in fatigued thin Cu films

Abstract

The ultra-high cycle fatigue behavior of supported Cu films with thicknesses between 40 and 360 nm has been investigated using a novel atomic force microscope (AFM)-based resonance method. The damage created under strain controlled fatigue loading is investigated as a function of applied strain, film thickness, and cycle numbers up to 5 × 1010. For films thicker than 100 nm, extrusions and boundary cracks limit the fatigue performance but only appear above a threshold in the applied strain amplitude which scales inversely with the square root of the film thickness. The extrusion formation is attributed to dislocation activation. The grain boundary cracks are replaced by grain boundary grooves in films of 100 nm and thinner. The grooves are believed to form by diffusion mediated creep processes, similar to observations at higher temperatures but here driven by cyclic stresses and capillarity, and become detectable once the accumulated plastic strain exceeds a critical value. These results indicate that due to creep processes, thinner films can be less resistant to fatigue than thicker films, particularly for large cycle numbers.