Role of transverse displacements for a quantized-velocity state of the lubricant

Abstract

Within the idealized scheme of a 1-dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova-like model, a special "quantized" sliding state was found for a solid lubricant confined between two periodic layers [PRL 97, 056101 (2006)]. This state, characterized by a nontrivial geometrically fixed ratio of the mean lubricant drift velocity <v_cm> and the externally imposed translational velocity v_ext, was understood as due to the kinks (or solitons), formed by the lubricant due to incommensuracy with one of the substrates, pinning to the other sliding substrate. A quantized sliding state of the same nature is demonstrated here for a substantially less idealized 2-dimensional model, where atoms are allowed to move perpendicularly to the sliding direction and interact via Lennard-Jones potentials. Clear evidence for quantized sliding at finite temperature is provided, even with a confined solid lubricant composed of multiple (up to 6) lubricant layers. Characteristic backward lubricant motion produced by the presence of "anti-kinks" is also shown in this more realistic context.

11 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Exactly quantized dynamics of classical incommensurate sliders
• Static friction on the fly: velocity depinning transitions of lubricants in motion
• Asymmetric frictional sliding between incommensurate surfaces
• Solitons and exact velocity quantization of incommensurate sliders
• Lubricated friction between incommensurate substrates
• Kink plateau dynamics in finite-size lubricant chains
• Hysteresis from dynamically pinned sliding states
• Nonlinear hysteretic behavior of a confined sliding layer

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Atomistic simulations of the sliding friction of graphene flakes
• Friction and Nonlinear Dynamics
• Tribology of the lubricant quantized-sliding state
• Subharmonic Shapiro steps of sliding colloidal monolayers in optical lattices
• Crystalline misfit-angle implications for solid sliding
• Influence of substrate potential shape on the dynamics of a sliding lubricant chain
• Soliton dynamics in a solid lubricant during sliding friction
• Sliding states of a soft-colloid cluster crystal: Cluster versus single-particle hopping