Thickness dependent fatigue life at microcrack nucleation for metal thin films on flexible substrates

For polymer-supported metal thin films used in flexible electronics, the definition of the fatigue lifetime at microcrack nucleation (FLMN) should be more physically meaningful than all the previous definitions at structural instability. In this paper, the FLMN of Cu films (with thickness from 100 nm to 3.75 µm) as well as Al thin films (from 80 to 800 nm) was experimentally characterized at different strain ranges and different thicknesses by using a simple electrical resistance measurement (ERM). A significant thickness dependence was revealed for the FLMN and a similar Coffin–Manson fatigue relationship observed commonly in bulk materials was found to be still operative in both the films. Microstructural analyses were carried out to verify the feasibility of ERM correspondingly.