GHz half wavelength contact acoustic microscopy (HaWaCAM): a feasibility study

The semiconductor industry needs to fit ever more devices per unit area to improve their performance; hence a trend towards increasingly complex structures by varying material combinations and 3D geometries with increasing aspect ratios. The new materials used may be optically opaque, posing problems for traditional optical metrology methods....

Evaluation of the contact area of lorry tyres in Eurocode’s fatigue load model 4 (FLM4)

Feasibility of 4 GHz half wavelength contact acoustic microscopy (HaWaCAM)

Several methods are being researched to detect and characterize buried nanoscale structures in hard solid samples. The most common acoustic method is acoustic microscopy. An acoustic microscope is based on a single element transducer operating in pulse-echo mode. The acoustic waves are coupled into a sample using a liquid couplant (eg water) and...

Evaluation of a passive exoskeleton for static upper limb activities

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a passive upper body exoskeleton on muscle activity, perceived musculoskeletal effort, local perceived pressure and subjective usability for a static overhead task. Eight participants (4 male, 4 female) held a load (0 kg and 2 kg) three times overhead for a duration of 30 s each, both with and...

Adhesion experiments using an AFM-Parameters of influence

Adhesion measurements were performed by AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy). It was shown that many parameters need to be controlled in order to provide reproducible and quantitative results. Adhesion forces were shown to depend on combination of materials characteristics and testing geometry as well as experimental protocol (contact time, contact...