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The T-peel fractured surfaces of bonded films of ethylene/1-octene copolymers with different 1-octene contents were characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and analyzed by fractal analysis. The AFM images showed strong dependence on the bonding temperature, peel rate, and the 1-octene content visually. This dependence has been demonstrated quantitatively by the fractal analyses which quantified an irregular surface by fractal dimensions and characteristic sizes. Two regimes showing fractal features were identified for each surface. In Regime I (higher magnifications) the welding and the following T-peel fracture procedures did little to change the fractal dimensions compared with the original surfaces before welding. But there were significant changes in Regime II (lower magnification) before welding and after T-peel fracture tests. The length scale that separated these two regimes is of the same order as that of polyethylene lamellar crystal structures. This suggests that the amorphous chains interdiffused across the interface while unmelted interfacial crystal structures remain essentially unaltered during the autohesion process. A "stitch-welding" autohesion mechanism was proposed to describe the bonding process in which only chains in the amorphous portions could interdiffuse. During the T-peel fracture tests, a crystal structure on the interface is either pulled over to the other side of the interface due to the interdiffused chains, remains unchanged, or is used as an anchor to pull a crystal structure from the other side of the interface. The characteristic sizes at which the fractal characteristics emerge were shown to be larger for the surfaces fractured at higher peel rates, which corresponds to higher fracture energy. This suggests that the appearance of fractal behavior at larger scales requires higher fracture energies. The characteristic sizes and fractal dimensions were also shown to depend on the molecular structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]