A study of dry stiction phenomenon in MEMS using a computational stochastic multi-scale methodology

This work studies the uncertainties of the adhesive contact problems for reduced size structures, e.g. the stiction failure of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). In MEMS, because of the large surface to volume ratio, the surfaces forces, such as van der Waals forces and capillary forces, are dominant in comparison with the body forces. As these force magnitudes strongly depend on the contact distance, when the two contacting surfaces are rough, the contact distances vary, and the physical contact areas are limited at the highest asperities of the contacting surfaces. Therefore, the adhesive contact forces between two rough surfaces can suffer from a scatter, and the involved structural behaviors can be indeterministic. To numerically predict the probability behaviors of structures involving adhesion in dry environments, in this paper, a computational stochastic model-based multi-scale method developed by the authors is applied. The effects of van der Waals is studied and compared with experimental data as well as with the effects of capillary forces.