Publications

Adhesion hysteresis of silane coated microcantilevers

De Boer, Maarten P.; Knapp, J.A.; Michalske, Terry A.

The authors have developed a new experimental approach for measuring hysteresis in the adhesion between micromachined surfaces. By accurately modeling the deformations in cantilever beams that are subject to combined interfacial adhesion and applied electrostatic forces, they determine adhesion energies for advancing and receding contacts. They draw on this new method to examine adhesion hysteresis for silane coated micromachined structures and found significant hysteresis for surfaces that were exposed to high relative humidity (RH) conditions. Atomic force microscopy studies of these surfaces showed spontaneous formation of agglomerates that they interpreted as silages that have irreversibly transformed from uniform surface layers at low RH to isolated vesicles at high RH. They used contact deformation models to show that the compliance of these vesicles could reasonably account for the adhesion hysteresis that develops at high RH as the surfaces are forced into contact by an externally applied load.