Nanotribology and nanomechanics of MEMS/NEMS and BioMEMS/BioNEMS materials and devices

The micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) need to be designed to perform expected functions typically in millisecond to picosecond range. Expected life of the devices for high speed contacts can vary from few hundred thousand to many billions of cycles, e.g., over a hundred billion cycles for digital micromirror devices (DMDs), which puts serious requirements on materials. For BioMEMS/BioNEMS, adhesion between biological molecular layers and the substrate, and friction and wear of biological layers may be important. There is a need for development of a fundamental understanding of adhesion, friction/stiction, wear, and the role of surface contamination, and environment. Most mechanical properties are known to be scale dependent. Therefore, the properties of nanoscale structures need to be measured. MEMS/NEMS materials need to exhibit good mechanical and tribological properties on the micro/nanoscale. There is a need to develop lubricants and identify lubrication methods that are suitable for MEMS/NEMS. Methods need to be developed to enhance adhesion between biomolecules and the device substrate. Component-level studies are required to provide a better understanding of the tribological phenomena occurring in MEMS/NEMS. The emergence of micro/nanotribology and atomic force microscopy-based techniques has provided researchers a viable approach to address these problems. This paper presents a review of micro/nanoscale adhesion, friction, and wear studies of materials and lubrication studies for MEMS/NEMS and BioMEMS/BioNEMS, and component-level studies of stiction phenomena in MEMS/NEMS devices.