Adhesion, Friction and Wear Measurements at Microscale

Modern trends in miniaturization of components cause the necessity of evaluation of tribological characteristics at conditions close to real operation. Existing methods and equipment such as AFM cannot give the adequate data on tribological performance of tiny tribounits, because the test contact loads, sliding velocity, and contact areas are not similar to real ones. The presentation describes the design and test data when using laboratory equipment for measuring adhesion forces and friction properties of micro systems. The set of developed devices includes adhesion meter, rotary and reciprocating microtribometers.