Abstract
The tribological behavior of micro mechanical systems plays a key role in the performance of such systems. Consequently, it is necessary to quantitatively understand the friction and wear properties in ultra minute region because the influence of the surface topography and the atmospheric gas can't be disregarded for making the component minute. Especially, external disturbance, i.e. vibration may promote fretting, which have been hardly studied in nano/micro-scale. In this paper, we investigated the influence of the relative humidity and the normal load on nano-scale wear. The sliding surface was measured by AFM after tests. The test materials of single-crystalline <111> silicon plates were rubbed against a tip made of SiN at load ranging from 20nN to 1OOnN. When the slip occurred, a protuberance was observed on the Si plate. The protuberance volume increased with increasing sliding amplitude, relative humidity and normal load.
