A model for the adhesion of multiscale rough surfaces in MEMS

The stiction and adhesion between rough surfaces is of importance for many applications, but contemporarily it is an extremely influential on the performance of Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The reason is that MEMS are at a small scale so that the surface forces are usually dominant over body forces. The surfaces of MEMS are also very clean and smooth, which leads to a larger area of contact and more adhesion between the surfaces. Past researchers have investigated the adhesion of single contacts or asperities, and others have also examined the effect of roughness using statistical and fractal methodologies. The current work uses a differing stacked multi-scale approach, which also suggests a method for predicting at which scales of roughness adhesion becomes important.