(279b) A Systematic Study of the Effect of Roughness of Contacting Surfaces On Stiction Between Them

In-use stiction is still one of the major bottlenecks that limits the lifetime and reliability and hence hinders the commercialization of most useful Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS). Therefore, surface interactions which lead to in-use stiction are still the focus of intense research in the MEMS community. Several studies investigating in-use stiction have reported that in the micro-domain, interactions between two surfaces are strongly influenced by their characteristics such as roughness and composition. Understanding the effects of these surface characteristics is therefore critical to many basic and applied problems in the fields of micro- and nano-technology. In this study, we have investigated the effect of roughness of contacting surfaces on stiction between them. The test surfaces used for this study are inherently smooth single crystal silicon surfaces, whose roughnesses are tailored in a controlled manner so that a systematic study of the effect of roughness can be conducted. The roughnesses of the test surfaces are tailored by texturing the test surfaces with gold nanoparticles deposited using a gas-expanded liquid technique. The textured test surfaces are characterized using atomic force microscopy. Stiction between in-plane test surfaces is determined using cantilever beams while stiction between sidewall test surfaces is determined using sidewall beams.