Development of detection method of real contact between solid surfaces by sputtered thin film

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It is difficult to detect the real contact area with lateral size of less than several μm by existing methods. In this study, a technique is proposed to realize the detection of the micro-contacts. The technique for detecting the contacts is based on the principle using transfers between sputtered thin films coated on both of contact surfaces. In the previous study, to realize the detection of the micro-contacts of less than 1μm in lateral size successfully, sputtered thin films of Au and Pt on a smooth surface are used. Using the procedures, not only the plastic but also elastic contacts may be expected to be seen at the range of several ten nm in lateral size.In this study, in order to clear the effects of the environment humidity, indentation experiments and the real contact area measurements are carried out. A measured mean radius of the circle of Hertz contact tends to become larger than a calculation value of hertzian equation when environment humidity is larger than 70%RH. It seems that this cause is the influence of the meniscus power by a water molecule ofa contact interface. However, it may be expected from the experimental result that this method is able to detect the real contact area by elastic or plastic contact with high accuracy.