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Design And Fabrication Of A Micro-Bearing Assembly To Study Rotor Friction, Daniel W. Brown

Journal of the Microelectronic Engineering Conference

The objective of this investigation was to design and fabricate a metrology tool for measuring the wear in micro-bearings. The critical component of the tool was a silicon test bed consisting of a bearing shaft and a set of microchannels to direct an air stream onto the fins of a micro-rotor assembled onto the bearing shaft. By driving the micro-rotor pneumatically, surface interactions between the bearing and the rotor can be studied over time. The silicon test bed mates to a custom aluminum chuck which has provisions for sealing the test bed and supplying air pressure from an external source. …