Abstract
Superlubricity, or structural lubricity, is a state that has two contacting surfaces exhibiting no resistance to sliding. This effect has been theoretically described to be possible between two completely clean single crystalline solid surfaces. However, experimental observations of superlubricity were limited to nanoscale and under high vacuum or inert gas environments even after twenty years since the concept of superlubricity has been suggested in 1990. In the last two years, remarkable advances have been achieved in experimental observations of superlubricity ranging from micro-scale to centimeters and in ambient environment. This study aims to report a comprehensive understanding of the superlubricity phenomenon.
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Quanshui ZHENG. He received his PhD degree in mechanics from Tsinghua University in 1989. Over the past ten years Zheng has been focused his research interest on interfacial motion, friction, and wet properties based on nano/micro technology and their applications for creating new classes of nano/micro devices and nano/micro fluidic tools. He and his colleagues have brought the key breakthrough for realizing superlubricity in micro and macro scales and in the ambient condition. They also pioneered the understanding on the instability and size effect of super-hydrophobicity. In 1990’s, Zheng solved a few of long-lasting fundamental problems in continuum mechanics, including the establishment of the modern theory of representations for tensor functions and the invariant-based nonlinear and anisotropic constitutive equations, Eshelby problem for non-ellipsoidal inclusions, micromechanical model, and Cauchy mean rotation. Zheng was an assistant, associate, and full professor of mechanics at the Jiangxi Polytechnic University from 1981 to 1993. He has been a professor of mechanics at Tsinghua University since 1993, where he had serviced as the head of the engineering mechanics department (2004–2011), the founding director of the University’s Center for Nano and Micro Mechanics (2010–), and the founding director of XIN Center (2014–), an international hub for innovation research and education co-founded by Tsinghua University and Tel Aviv University. Zheng has over five years working experience in England, France, Germany, USA, and Australia. He is also the editor-in-Chief of both Acta Mechanica Sinica and Chinese Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.
Ze LIU. He received his Bachelor degree in Mechanics from Harbin institute of Technology in 2007 and PhD degree in mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2012. After then, he has been a postdoc in Yale Univeristy. His research interests include friction, lubrication, devices and sensors, microstructure-property relationships.
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Zheng, Q., Liu, Z. Experimental advances in superlubricity. Friction 2, 182–192 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0056-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0056-0