Recently, it has been reported that frictional behavior at nanometer scale can be different from that at macro scale. In this article, friction and wear tests were conducted using an AFM to investigate the effect of real contact area on the coefficient of friction and wear property. SiO₂, Mica, and SiGe were used in friction test and the AFM tip was Si₃N₄.The real contact area between an AFM tip and flat surface was calculated by the Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) theory. Wear specimen was Mica, and the diamond tip was used. We found that the coefficient of friction is constant below a critical area, but it is degraded over the area. Moreover, it is found that wear depth increased rapidly from a certain load and was degraded as a function of the number of the scanning cycles. Also, the range of scanning velocity used in this study had little effect on the wear depth.
