Single crystal silicon based micro-tribotester and testing

A single-crystal silicon based on-chip micro-tribotester is designed in order to simulate lateral friction and wear characters for moveable MEMS devices. Working principle is introduced in detail and mode analysis is carried out by means of theoretical calculation and finite element method in order to get resonant frequency of the system. Resonant frequency and dynamic friction coefficient were tested with optical microscopy, CCD image acquisition system and computer in clean booth (thousand class, room temperature and 50% atmospheric humidity). The tested natural frequency is 5600, which is close to the theoretical result 5590 and FEM result 5641. Dynamic frictional coefficient of the friction pair is in the range of 0.24 and 0.35. It is verified that with the variation of normal force, dynamic friction coefficient is no longer a constant value.