Interface fracture

Interfacial adhesion plays a central role in a number of technologically important applications. Quantitatively measuring the adhesion of an interface and understanding the processes and controlling mechanisms of energy dissipation is not always a straightforward task, however. It is often not enough to know that an interface in a particular application is weak and prone to failure because it can be difficult to accurately recreate that interface with a bulk specimen and derive a meaningful adhesion value. Rather, a fundamental knowledge of the processes that actually contribute to the interfacial strength is important, so that, when bulk specimens are prepared, care can be taken to eliminate energy-absorbing processes that are not present in the actual application. Accordingly, this paper reviews some of the literature highlighting the contributing factors that control interfacial adhesion. The focus is on those models that describe the detailed mechanisms of the energy-absorbing processes and on some of the experimental data that illustrates those models.