The corrosion of copper is an important area in materials science because of the widespread use of copper in structural devices and electronics. These widespread uses in conjunction with its thermodynamic instability in most atmospheric conditions have prompted numerous atmospheric copper corrosion studies. The goal of these investigations has been to identify the underlying mechanisms by which corrosion proceeds in order to prevent any detrimental corrosion effects. Despite these studies, the microstructure of copper and its oxides remains poorly understood. Therefore, our investigation is concentrated on determining this microstructure.

In our investigation, copper films are electron-beam evaporated onto SiO2 coated Si wafers and then exposed to an electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) O2 plasma, which simulates an aggressive oxidizing environment. The ECR-grown oxide is fully oxidized to CuO at the surface and changes to CU2O further into the sample. The thickness of the oxide layer is controlled by the sample exposure time to the ECR plasma.