Experimental Investigation of Adhesion and Friction Phenomena of Ultrananocrystalline Diamond (UNCD) and Aluminum Oxide in MEMS

This thesis aims to provide the latest progresses on the experimental investigation of friction and adhesion phenomena, occurring at the nanoscale in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). I have studied and characterized the interaction between MEMS sidewalls in contact and sliding one onto another. Ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) and...

Improved analysis and visualization of friction loop data: unraveling the energy dissipation of meso-scale stick–slip motion

In this paper we demonstrate a new method for analyzing and visualizing friction force measurements of meso-scale stick–slip motion, and introduce a method for extracting two separate dissipative energy components. Using a microelectromechanical system tribometer, we execute 2 million reciprocating sliding cycles, during which we measure the...