ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the surface forces and adhesion that act between an asperity and a flat surface, because this is a configuration likely to occur in microelectromechanical systems, and is the most common situation in scanning probe microscopy studies which are used to probe materials properties with nanometer-scale lateral resolution. It examines the origins of adhesion hysteresis. If the maximum observed force upon tip-sample approach in the absence of cantilever instabilities is the same as the pull-off force, there is no adhesion hysteresis. The concepts discussed in this chapter will be most helpful to readers if they are interpreting their nanotribological results in terms of adhesion hysteresis.
