Influence of surface roughness on the adhesion of elastic films.

It is shown that a self-affine roughness at the junction of an elastic film and a hard solid substrate influences considerably the adhesion of the elastic film, especially for small roughness exponents H (H<0.5) and/or large long wavelength roughness ratios w/xi with w being the rms roughness amplitude and xi being the in-plane roughness correlation length. Analytical calculations of the local surface slope allows an estimate of the roughness effects on the adhesion energy more precisely than those presented in earlier works (especially for roughness exponents H<0.5). For weak surface roughness the elastic energy contribution is significant on the film effective surface energy deltagamma(eff) and on pull-off force for elastic modulus E in the range of GPa. Moreover, in the case of partial contact an estimation of the pull-off force shows that it strongly decreases with reducing contact area due to surface.