Quantitative peel test for thin films/layers based on a coupled parametric and statistical study

The adhesion strength of thin films is critical to the durability of micro and nanofabricated devices. However, current testing methods are imprecise and do not produce quantitative results necessary for design specifications. The most common testing methods involve the manual application and removal of unspecified tape. This overcome many of the challenges of connecting to thin films to test their adhesion properties but different tapes, variation in manual application, and poorly controlled removal of tape can result in wide variation in resultant forces. Furthermore, the most common tests result in a qualitative ranking of film survival, not a measurement with scientific units. This paper presents a study into application and peeling parameters that can cause variation in the peeling force generated by tapes. The results of this study were then used to design a test methodology that would control the key parameters and produced repeatable quantitative measurements. Testing using the resulting method showed significant improvement over more standard methods, producing measured results with reduced variation. The new method was tested on peeling a layer of paint from a PTFE backing and was found to be sensitive enough to register variation in force due to differing peeling mechanisms within a single test.