Fatigue failure types of the conducting polythiophene thin film on the stainless substrate

Conducting polymer films have been widely used as the small size and lightweight materials for electronic parts, sensors and semiconductors. For reliability of these parts, it is particularly necessary to know the fatigue fracture behavior of the thin film. In this paper, a new fatigue testing method was developed by which fatigue failure on the surface deposited by the electrochemical synthesis on the base of the 304 stainless steel plate under the cyclic tension-tension loading. The fatigue tests were investigated by the stochastic observation method with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The experimental results show that the fatigue fracture types of the conducting polythiophene thin film on the substrate, through which the nucleation of fatigue microcrack and propagation as well as fatigue embattlement process can be expressed by experimental approach. Additionally, detailed analysis is introduced through observation with SEM and the effects on the results of testing conditions are discussed in this paper.