Crystal rotation behavior with fatigue crack propagation in copper films

Using a fatigue testing method by which fatigue cracks can be initiated and propagated in a film adhered to cover an elliptical through-hole in a base plate subjected to push-pull cyclic loads, annealed copper films with the thickness of 100μm and those reduced the thickness from the 100μm to 50μm by an electro-polishing were fatigued under a constant stress amplitude with a stress ratio of zero. The crystal rotation behavior with the fatigue crack propagation was investigated by measuring the crystal orientation around the fatigue crack initiated from the notch root before and after fatigue testing, using EBSD (Electron Back-scatter Diffraction) method. Then, the change of crystal orientation with fatigue testing was evaluated quantitatively from the misorientation between the crystal orientation matrix on the same point obtained before and after fatigue testing. As a result, the angle of the crystal rotation obtained from the region showing the high fatigue crack propagation rate was larger than that obtained from the region showing the low fatigue crack propagation rate for the film with the thickness of 100μm, while the fatigue crack propagated faster in the film with the thickness of 50μm than that with the thickness of 100μm regardless of the small crystal rotation angles with the fatigue testing for the film with the thickness of 50μm.