Design and Built of a Micro-Tribometer with High Vacuum and Low Temperature

Abstract

With the imperious demands for reducing friction and wear under special working conditions, it need to devote more efforts to develop tribometer with various testing environment such as high vacuum and low temperature. In this work, a novel micro-tribometer has been designed and built with a resolution of friction force better than 10-4 N. A double leaf cantilever was employed as force senor and the corresponding deformation was measured by a laser interferometer. The lowest sample temperature was about 5 K which was achieved by GM refrigerators. And the precision of temperature control was about ± 0.1 K. The highest vacuum of the experimental chamber was up to 5×10-5 Pa, which was realized by a turbo pump and a mechanical pump. In the testing of the tribometer, sample temperature of about 5 K and chamber vacuum of about 2.04 × 10-5 Pa has been obtained. In addition, the resolution of friction force was about 6.9 × 10-5 N.