Issue |
EPL
Volume 95, Number 6, September 2011
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 66002 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Condensed Matter: Structural, Mechanical and Thermal Properties | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/95/66002 | |
Published online | 30 August 2011 |
Low friction and rotational dynamics of crystalline flakes in solid lubrication
1
Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Molecules and Materials - Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525AJ Nijmegen, the Netherlands, EU
2
Donetsk Institute for Physics and Engineering of NASU - 83144, Donetsk, Ukraine
3
School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University - 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel
Received:
5
May
2011
Accepted:
29
July
2011
Solids at incommensurate contact display low-friction, “superlubric”, sliding. For graphene flakes on a graphite surface, superlubric sliding is only temporary due to rotation of the flakes from incommensurate to commensurate contact with the substrate. We examine this rotational channel of friction in a prototype geometry of meso- and macroscopic solid lubrication. By molecular-dynamics simulations and theoretical arguments we find that two surfaces lubricated by mobile, rotating graphene flakes exhibit stable superlubric sliding as for ideally incommensurate contacts also when they are covered by randomly oriented pinned graphene patches. For commensurate surfaces, we find a low-friction state at low temperature where incommensurate states are not destroyed by thermal fluctuations.
PACS: 68.35.Af – Atomic scale friction / 64.70.Rh – Commensurate-incommensurate transitions / 05.45.-a – Nonlinear dynamics and chaos
© EPLA, 2011
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.