Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2011
Metal/polymer system joints are widely encountered nowadays in microscopic structures such as displays and microchips. In several critical cases they undergo thermal and mechanical loading, with contact failure due to fracture as a possible consequence. Because of their variety in nature and composition metal/polymer joints have become major challenges for experimental, theoretical, and numerical studies. Here we report on results of molecular dynamics simulations carried out to study the mechanical response of a metal/polymer joint, in this case the Cu/polybutadiene model system. The behavior of Cu and the cross-linked polybutadiene are modeled, respectively, by the Embedded Atom Method (EAM) and the Universal Force Field (UFF). Loading is applied under compression. Different potentials are used to describe the interactions in the metal/polymer interface, which allows us to qualitatively analyze possible mechanisms of failure in these joints, below the metal melting point and above the polymer glass transition temperatures.