Buckling instability of a solid coating under the plane compression of a polymer substrate

The procedure for studying the phenomenon of the buckling instability of a rigid coating under the conditions of plane compression of a soft polymer s ubstrate attached to the coating was advanced. This phenomenon was modeled under the plane thermally induced shrinkage of biaxially oriented PET and P P films with a thin (50-200 nm) rigid (platinum, carbon, aluminum, and stai nless steel) coating. Upon shrinkage, the coating is found to buckle and to acquire a regular microrelief which is characterized by three types of mor phological features: rather big-sized cellular structures, wavy structures inside cells, and rectilinear folds crossing the whole sample. The developm ent and morphology of such structures are independent of the nature of a co ating-substrate pair. This fact suggests that the above phenomenon of buckl ing instability is a fundamental unknown feature of the rigid coating-soft substrate systems.