Abstract
Lamellar compounds such as the disulfides of molybdenum and tungsten are widely used as additives in lubricant oils or as solid lubricants in aerospace industries. The dioxides of these two transition metals have identical microstructures with those of the disulfides. The differences in the lubrication behaviors of disulfide and dioxides were investigated theoretically. Tungsten dioxide and molybdenum dioxide exhibit higher bond strengths at the interface and lower interlayer interactions than those of the disulfides which indicates their superlubricity. Furthermore, the topography of the electron density of the single layer nanostructure determined their sliding potential barrier; the dioxides showed a weaker electronic cloud distribution between the two neighboring oxygen atoms, which facilitated the oxygen atoms of the counterpart to go through. For commensurate friction, the dioxides exhibited nearly the same value of friction work, and same was the case for the disulfides. The lower positive value of friction work for the dioxides confirmed their improved lubricity than the disulfides and the higher mechanical strength of the bulk dioxides demonstrated that they are excellent solid lubricants in vacuum.
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Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51522510 and 51675513), the “Top Hundred Talents” Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Key Basic Research and Development (973) Program of China (2013CB632300) for financial support.
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Jingyan NIAN. He received his master degree in physical chemistry in 2012 from Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, China. During his undergraduate, he joined the State Key Laboratory of Solid Lubrication at Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His current position is an associate researcher. His research area covers the atomic-scale friction, superlubricity, and space lubrication.
Liwei CHEN. He joined Prof. Zhiguang GUO’s biomimetic materials of tribology (BMT) group at University of Hubei in 2014 in pursuing his Ph.D. degree. His current scientific interests are devoted to designing and fabricating superamphiphobic materials for the separation of oil/water mixtures.
Zhiguang GUO. He received his Ph.D. degree from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 2007. During Feb. 2009 to Feb. 2010, he worked in Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK, as a visiting scholar. Now he is a full professor in LICP financed by “Top Hundred Talents” program of CAS. Till now, he has published more than 130 papers about the interfaces of materials.
Weimin LIU. He received his Ph.D. degree with major of Lubricating Materials and Tribology from Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics (LICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1990. In 2013, he was elected as the fellow of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and now, he is the director of the state key lab of solid lubrication. Up to now, he has published more than 500 papers and his research interests mainly focus on space lubrication and high performance lubricants.
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Nian, J., Chen, L., Guo, Z. et al. Computational investigation of the lubrication behaviors of dioxides and disulfides of molybdenum and tungsten in vacuum. Friction 5, 23–31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-016-0128-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-016-0128-4