Project Report Friction Measurement and Lubricating of Rotary Silicon MEMS Device

MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-systems) device has been a promising and fascinating topic in both mechanical and electrical engineering domains for decades with the revolutionary contributions to the contemporary micro-scale instruments especially for the micro-actuator and micro-sensor. Among the versatile material foundation to build up the MEMS device, silicon wafer is preferred to due to the semi-conductional electrical property and its chemical inertness. However, the surface tribological property of silicon wafer is not such admired as its other features aforesaid. Rotary MEMS device based on silicon deserves broad applications since the requirements of rotary or oscillatory motions, such as micro-motor and rotary tribometer itself. This project report would take deep insights into the developments of rotary MEMS devices and their friction measurements. The mechanical governing equations which help the modeling and prediction of the device tribology behavior would be studied. Meanwhile, the corresponding simulation and fabrication would be also covered for the complementary understanding. Additionally, the asperity measurement technology for the rotary MEMS device would be discussed combined with the MEMS actuator. According to successful measurement of the surface asperity of the device, the optimal lubricating methods would be studied in order to reduce or avoid the wearing, fracture and even failure of the MEMS device. Outline of the report