Abstract
Fracture-induced structuring (FIS) is found in the polymer thin film sandwiched between two relatively rigid flat plates by simply separating apart the plates, which produces a complementary set of micro/nano scale nonsymmetrical periodic polymer ripple gratings on both plates. FIS is a potential candidate to be a low-cost and high-throughput nanopatterning technique, however, the the cracking mechanism of FIS is still not fully understood. In this study, FIS gratings were observed to follow the direction of the maximum in-plane shear stress induced by external separating-load. Furthermore, the result of gamma-irradiation effect shows that homogeneous/glassy and brittle material properties of polymer thin film is essential to cause uniform and smooth cracking. More phenomena such as primary/secondary gratings and competed rupture are also discussed in this paper. The results of this study can be applied to nanopatterning and nanotechnology.