9522964 Liechti This project is to determine the nature of and the force vs. separation laws for crack faces where surface interactions may be occurring. One possibility is that contact electrification may be taking place during the formation of the new surfaces. A combined experimental/numerical approach will be used to extract the force separation data for freshly cracked interfaces and those interfaces that have been brought into sliding contact and non-sliding contact. These will be complemented by measurements of charging and electron emission in order to determine if electrostatic effects are involved in the surface interactions. The knowledge obtained in this work is expected to be useful in predicting the durability of microelectronic devices, coatings and adhesively bonded joints. ***
