Theoretical and Experimental Study of the Influence of AFM Tip Geometry and Orientation on Capillary Force

摘要

Adhesion issues are present in many disciplines such as, for example, surface science, microrobotics or MEMS design. Within this framework, this paper presents a study on capillary forces due to capillary condensation. A simulation tool had already been presented using Surface Evolver and Matlab to compute the shape of a meniscus in accordance with the Kelvin equation and contact angles. The numerical results of this simulation complied well with literature results. One very important result is the ability to compute the evolution of the capillary force depending on the tilt angle of the gripper with respect to the object. The main contribution of this new paper is a test bench and the related experimental results which validate these numerical results. We present here new experimental results illustrating the role of humidity and tilt angle in capillary forces at the nanoscale.