Abstract: Early in the 19th century, the characters of friction process on atomic or molecularlevel had been studied. However, the concept of microtribology was proposed until 1980's whenatomic force microscope (AFM) and frictional force microscope (FFM) came out. To develop themicrotribology research, researching advances and the research methods were reviewed. On thebasic research, it was proposed for boundary lubrication; on the application research, it wasproposed for the lubrication of magnetic headerdisk system. The research methods include AFM,FFM , LB technique , surface force apparatus , quartz crystal microbalance , IR , XPS and moleculardynamic simulation, etc. It was mainly applied in tribology of high density magnetiy recordingsystem, micromachine, manufacture of integrated circuit (IC) , microfriction, microwear andmicroadherence etc. In addition, some problems to which should be pay attention in future ofmicrotribology research were point out.