Abstract
Tetrahedral amorphous carbon coatings have the potential to significantly reduce friction and wear between sliding components. Here, we provide atomistic insights into the evolution of the sliding interface between naked and hydrogen-passivated ta-C sliding partners under dry and lubricated conditions. Using reactive classical atomistic simulations we show that sliding induces a sp3 to sp2 rehybridization and that the shear resistance is reduced by hydrogen-passivation and hexadecane-lubrication—despite our finding that nanoscale hexadecane layers are not always able to separate and protect ta-C counter surfaces during sliding. As asperities deform, carbon atoms within the hexadecane lubricant bind to the ta-C sliding partners resulting in degradation of the hexadecane molecules and in increased material intermixing at the sliding interface. Hydrogen atoms from the passivation layer and from the hexadecane chains continue to be mixed within a sp2 rich sliding interface eventually generating a tribo-layer that resembles an a-C:H type of material. Upon separation of the sliding partners, the tribo-couple splits within the newly formed sp2 rich a-C:H mixed layer with significant material transfer across the sliding partners. This leaves behind a-C:H coated ta-C surfaces with dangling C bonds, linear C chains and hydrocarbon fragments.
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Pedro A. ROMERO. He has received a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering (2001), a MS degree in Solids Mechanics (2004), and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (2008) all from Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, USA) where he performed solid mechanics research using continuum level approaches, i.e, FEM and micromechanical modeling. After a two-year post-doctoral stay at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) (Lausanne, Switzerland) where he worked on atomistic modeling of nanomaching, he has spent the last three years at the Fraunhofer Institut für Werkstoffmechanik (IWM) (Freiburg, Germany) investigating tribological problems using atomistic simulations.
Lars PASTEWKA. He has received an MS degree in physics (2003), a Dipl.-Ing. in Microsystems Engineering (2005) and a PhD degree in physics (2010), the former from North Carolina State University and the latter ones from the University of Freiburg. Pastewka has worked at Fraunhofer IWM and has held Fulbright and Marie-Curie fellowships that allowed him to carry out research at North Carolina State and Johns Hopkins University. He recently moved to the Institute for Applied Materials at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology to study contact, friction and wear using a range of theoretical methods from the atomic to the continuum scale.
Julian VON LAUTZ. He holds a Dipl.-Ing. in Mechanical Engineering (2010) from the Technical University of Braunschweig. He is currently a PhD candidate at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and a graduate researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials (IWM) in Freiburg, Germany where he investigates the tribological properties of amorphous carbon and diamond.
Michael MOSELER. He received his diploma and PhD degrees in Physics from the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany in 1994 and 1998, respectively. After his PostDoc at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, he became leader of a computational materials science group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechnanics of Materials in Freiburg in 2002. In addition to this position he is Professor for Modelling and Simulation of Functional Nanosystems at the Physics Department of the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg. His research areas cover atomistic simulations in tribology, nano technology and cluster science.
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Romero, P.A., Pastewka, L., Von Lautz, J. et al. Surface passivation and boundary lubrication of self-mated tetrahedral amorphous carbon asperities under extreme tribological conditions. Friction 2, 193–208 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0057-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0057-z