SURFACE-ROUGHNESS AND PARTICLE ADHESION

One of the important mechanisms affecting particle adhesion is the geo metry of the contact between the particle and the surface. Atomic forc e microscopy can measure both this geometry and the particle adhesion. The positional dependence of adhesion of a point probe to a variety o f rough surfaces has been measured. The Derjaguin approximation predic ts that the adhesion fluctuations are proportional to the surface curv ature fluctuations, if the adhesion is dominated by long range forces. Atomic force microscopy adhesion maps have directly verified this lin earity.