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Frictional Properties of a Mesoscopic Contact with Engineered Surface Roughness

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Abstract

Friction between titanium spheres and an artificially structured silicon surface was measured with a friction force microscope. Two spheres with radii of 2.3 μm and 7.9 μm were firmly glued to the tip of the microscope cantilever. A periodic stripe pattern with a groove depth of 26 nm and systematically increasing groove width from 500 nm to 3500 nm was fabricated from a silicon wafer with a focused ion beam. The sphere substrate friction coefficient shows a strong enhancement at a certain groove periodicity, which is related to geometrical interlocking of the two surfaces. This shows that careful modification of the surface roughness can help to control the tribological behavior of mesoscale contacts.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jan-Erik Schmutz (Phoenix Contact GmbH) and Marcus Schäfer (nanoAnalytics GmbH) for many helpful discussions and continuous support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Nanotechnology (CeNTech), Heisenbergstr. 11, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Johannes Sondhauß & Harald Fuchs

  2. Institute of Physics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Wilhelm-Klemm-Str. 10, 48149, Münster, Germany

    Johannes Sondhauß & Harald Fuchs

  3. Institute for Applied Physics, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 16, 35392, Giessen, Germany

    André Schirmeisen

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  1. Johannes Sondhauß
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  2. Harald Fuchs
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  3. André Schirmeisen
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Correspondence to Johannes Sondhauß.

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Sondhauß, J., Fuchs, H. & Schirmeisen, A. Frictional Properties of a Mesoscopic Contact with Engineered Surface Roughness. Tribol Lett 42, 319–324 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-011-9776-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-011-9776-8

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