Surface and friction characterization by thermoelectric measurements during ultrasonic friction processes

Even though friction is one of the oldest problems in physics many aspects of friction processes are not clear today. We present an experimental setup, which permits the study of tribological systems by measuring the dissipated heat at the interface of two surfaces during a friction process with a time resolution of 1 ms. The apparatus is based on a standard ultrasonic wire-bond machine used in semiconductor industries to connect the internal semiconductor die to the external leads, but the standard bond wire is replaced by a thermocouple. To demonstrate the ability of the apparatus it will be shown that bond substrates used in semiconductor industries can be unequivocally characterized.