For micro- and nanostructures surface forces become dominant over gravity and inertia due to large surface area-to-volume ratio. These forces lead to tribological concerns, which become critical because adhesion, stiction, friction, wear and surface contamination greatly affect yields, performances, and durability of MEMS/NEMS devices. Fundamental knowledge of micro- and nanotribology is required in order to control the surface-dominated phenomena, and thereby speed up MEMS commercialization. An efficient way to control surface dominated forces is to selectively modify surfaces by applying appropriate coatings.
Our vision is to develop methods and coatings for minimizing stiction between the microstrutures, and to investigate physical and chemical properties of the coatings. The activity received an FTP (Danish Research Council for Technology and Production) grant for the project “Stiction Control of MEMS Materials and Devices”.
Figure. Self-assembled monolayers (SAM) are good candidate for avoiding stiction. Left: formation of SAMs on silicon. Middel: water droplet on surface modified by SAM. Right: Thermal stability of various SAMs.
People
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Yanxin Zhuang
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Ole Hansen
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Partners
Student projects
Please contact Ole Hansen
Funding
The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation (FTP).
Publications
Yanxin Zhuang, Ole Hansen, Thomas Knieling, Christian Wang, Pirmin Rombach, Walter Lang, Wolfgang Benecke, Markus Kehlenbeck and Jörn Koblitz, “Vapor-Phase Self-Assembled Monolayers for Anti-Stiction Applications in MEMS”, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems 16, 1451-1460, (2007). PDF
Yan Xin Zhuang, Ole Hansen, Thomas Knieling, Christian Wang, Pirmin Rombach, Walter Lang, Wolfgang Benecke, Markus Kehlenbeck and Jörn Koblitz , “Thermal stability of vapor phase deposited self-assembled monolayers for MEMS anti-stiction”, Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering 16, 2259-2264, (2006). PDF
Y. X. Zhuang, and A. Menon , “On the stiction of MEMS materials”, Tribology letters 19, 111-117 (2005). PDF
Y. X. Zhuang, and A. Menon , “Wettability and thermal stability of fluorocarbon film using deep reactive ion etching tools” , J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 23, 434-439, (2005). PDF