Adhesion force between silica microspheres of different sizes and different rough surfaces (silicon and diamond like carbon) has been measured with an atomic force microscope (AFM). Surface roughness, asperity geometry, and size of adhering particles play an important role in determining the adhesion force. Adhesion force linearly increases with size of adhering particle for smooth surfaces and can be described by the JRK model. Adhesion force of adhering particle bigger than in size to the asperities decreases with surface roughness and can be described by the Rabinovich model. For the particles smaller than or similar in size to the asperities, the adhesion force increases with surface roughness. In later case, the interaction of adhering particles with valley portion of asperities is dominated and the contact area increases. On the basis of Rabinovich model, a new equation, which takes the relative size of adhering particles and asperities into account, is derived and compared with experimental results. The normalized adhesion force decreases with ratio of root-mean-square (rms) roughness to radius of adhering particle up to 0.0025, followed by increasing normalized adhesion forces.
Keywords: AFM; Adhesion; Colloidal probe technique; Roughness; Surface force.
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