Correlation Between Thermal Interface Conductance and Mechanical Adhesion Strength in Cu-Coated Glassy Carbon

The influence of defective areas in the interface on the correlation between the thermal interface conductance and the mechanical adhesion strength was investigated on as-prepared and heat-treated samples of copper-coated carbon flat specimens with different bonding layers between the copper film and the substrate. The thermal interface conductance was determined by frequency-domain photothermal radiometry. The mechanical adhesion strength of the film coating was deduced from pull-off experiments. The imperfect interfaces were modeled by two different values for the thermal interface conductance, $$G_{1}$$ and $$G_{2}$$ , which co-exist at different areas on the interface and are weighted according to their areas, $$A_{1}$$ and $$A_{2}$$ . The model parameters were determined by adjusting the frequency dependence of the normalized phases and phase differences of the PTR signals from as-prepared and heat-treated samples. The total thermal conductance of the interface was found to exhibit a correlation with the adhesion strength for most of the heat-treated samples whereas, among the as-prepared samples, considerable deviations from such a trend exist. The observations are explained by the impact of supplementary stress on the adhesion strength measurements which are due to the strain developed during the preparation process at the interface. The interfacial stress and strain are mostly released during thermal annealing. A semi-empirical formula was developed that describes the impact of the defective areas on the adhesion strength using the experimentally determined thermal model parameters.