Flexible circuits are widely used in mobile devices and wearable devices because they are lightweight, compact and high durability against repetitive bending. Recently, there has been growing interests in fabrication of high durability and low-cost fl...
Flexible circuits are widely used in mobile devices and wearable devices because they are lightweight, compact and high durability against repetitive bending. Recently, there has been growing interests in fabrication of high durability and low-cost flexible circuits as the wearable electronics market grows sharply.
In general, flexible circuits are formed by using lithography process after coating the polymer substrate with copper. However these processes use a large amount of harmful chemicals and need many manufacturing steps. Moreover, the importance about adhesion strength and fatigue properties has been highlighted as the market demands high mechanical and electrical performances of flexible circuits.
In this study, a directly formed copper circuit was fabricated with using plasma and electroless copper deposition and also the effects on the adhesion strength, the fatigue properties and fracture mechanisms of fabricated Cu/PET composite films depending on the change of nanostructures formed by the plasma treatment were discussed.