Contact deformation of a micromechanical structure

Contact deformation of a plate-like micromechanical structure subjected to external force was analysed by considering the effect of adhesion energy. Using the linear plate theory and energy criterion, closed-form solutions of the contact deformation under different constraints were obtained, from which simple relations between the adhesion energy and bending moment at the edge of the contact zone were derived. The bending moment decreases with the adhesion energy and bending stiffness of the structure. A lower bound of the critical gap between the structure and the substrate for the occurrence of jump-in contact instability under the load-free condition was found to be proportional to the square of the structure length and the square root of the adhesion energy.