Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2014
A microcantliever based crack healing experiment is described and utilized in order to study the capillary nucleation rate for typical MEMS surfaces. An advanced test chamber that allows exquisite environmental control is also described and used in this study. Crack healing experiments prove to be a viable experimental technique to investigate the dynamics of capillary nucleation. The effective capillary nucleation time for the multi-asperity surface of microcantilever samples appears to increase logarithmically with adhesion energy.