The role of lubricant molecular shape in microscopic friction

Abstract

With the help of a simple two-dimensional model we simulate the tribological properties of a thin lubricant film consisting of linear (chain) molecules in the ordinary soft-lubricant regime. We find that friction generally increases with chain length, in agreement with their larger bulk viscosity. When comparing the tribological properties of molecules which stick bodily to the substrates with others carrying a single sticking termination, we find that the latter generally yield a larger friction than the former.

11 pages, 15 figures, in print in Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (4)

• Simulations of the Static Friction Due to Adsorbed Molecules
• Exactly quantized dynamics of classical incommensurate sliders
• Static friction on the fly: velocity depinning transitions of lubricants in motion
• Kink plateau dynamics in finite-size lubricant chains

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Friction and Nonlinear Dynamics
• On the connection between sliding friction and phonon lifetimes: Thermostat induced thermolubricity effects in molecular dynamics simulations
• 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