Computational study of thermocompression bonding of carbon nanotubes to metallic substrates

XH Song and ZY Gan and S Liu and H Yan and Q Lv, JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS, 106, 104308 (2009).

DOI: 10.1063/1.3261750

Thermocompression bonding of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to metallic substrates is studied using Molecular dynamics. The interaction of the CNT and the metal cluster at high temperature is investigated first. For the diffusion bonding process, the effects of temperature and external pressure are examined. In addition, we apply the tensile loading to examine the mechanical properties and the failure modes during the debonding process. The results show that formation of coalescence structure between the CNT and the metal cluster provides a nanoscale metal surface to facilitate diffusion bonding. Both high temperature and high pressure will enhance the bonding. In addition, the debonding position of the samples under the tensile loading depends on the competition of CNT-metal and metal-metal interface strength. For samples bonded under high temperature and high pressure, the debonding first occurs at the CNT-metal interface. While for samples bonded under low temperature and low pressure, the interdiffusion is not sufficient and therefore the debonding occurs at metal-metal interface. These behaviors indicate that, to obtain larger bonding strength, it is necessary to select the metal with excellent adhesion property to the CNT Surface as the medium layer and guarantee full interface contact between the metal cluster and the metallic substrate during the diffusion bondino. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3261750

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