Fabrication, metallographic and tribologic investigations of LIGA-microstructures made of nickelphosphorous alloys

The performance and lifetime of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) is strongly affected by friction and wear. Because of the restrictions due to the fabrication process the variety of materials used for micro systems is not very manifold. This results often is very poor tribological properties, since the tribological pairings are disadvantageous with regard to friction and especially wear. We therefore investigated materials which can be fabricated by the process currently used for LIGA-microstructures, and have the potential of better properties concerning friction and wear. The results of our tribologic experiments showed, that nickel phosphorous alloys are a promising material for microsystems suffering wear, especially at high surface pressures (high loading). Their absolute values of the wear intensity, are at least one order of magnitude lower than those of nickel and copper, which are the materials mostly used today.