Superlubricity - a new perspective on an established paradigm

Abstract

Superlubricity is a frictionless tribological state sometimes occurring in nanoscale material junctions. It is often associated with incommensurate surface lattice structures appearing at the interface. Here, by using the recently introduced registry index concept which quantifies the registry mismatch in layered materials, we prove the existence of a direct relation between interlayer commensurability and wearless friction in layered materials. We show that our simple and intuitive model is able to capture, down to fine details, the experimentally measured frictional behavior of a hexagonal graphene flake sliding on-top of the surface of graphite. We further predict that superlubricity is expected to occur in hexagonal boron nitride as well with tribological characteristics very similar to those observed for the graphitic system. The success of our method in predicting experimental results along with its exceptional computational efficiency opens the way for modeling large-scale material interfaces way beyond the reach of standard simulation techniques.

18 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (17)

• The Shear Mode of Multi-Layer Graphene
• Stacking and Registry Effects in Layered Materials: The Case of Hexagonal Boron Nitride
• Self-Retracting Motion of Graphite Microflakes
• Atomic Scale Sliding and Rolling of Carbon Nanotubes
• Frictional figures of merit for single layered nanostructures
• Commensurate-incommensurate phase transition in bilayer graphene
• Atomistic simulations of the sliding friction of graphene flakes
• Fast diffusion of graphene flake on graphene layer
• Stability of superlubric sliding on graphite
• Atomic-scale simulations on the sliding of incommensurate surfaces: The breakdown of superlubricity
• Interlayer Registry Determines the Sliding Potential of Layered Metal Dichalcogenides: The case of 2H-MoS2
• Low friction and rotational dynamics of crystalline flakes in solid lubrication
• Diffusion and drift of graphene flake on graphite surface
• Quantifying the Stacking Registry Matching in Layered Materials
• Molecular dynamics of cleavage and flake formation during the interaction of a graphite surface with a rigid nanoasperity
• Role of surface roughness in superlubricity
• Crystalline misfit-angle implications for solid sliding

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Superlubricity of Graphene Nanoribbons on Gold Surfaces
• Robust Superlubricity in Graphene/h-BN Heterojunctions
• Tribochemistry of graphene on iron and its possible role in lubrication of steel
• The Best Features of Diamond Nanothread for Nanofiber Application
• Surface passivation by graphene in the lubrication of iron: A comparison with bronze
• Phonons in Twisted Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Bilayers ("Twistnonics"): Ultra-soft Phasons, and a transition from Superlubric to Pinned Phase
• Multiwalled nanotube faceting unravelled
• Twist-Dependent Anisotropic Thermal Conductivity in Homogeneous MoS${}_2$ Stacks
• Stacking transition in bilayer graphene caused by thermally activated rotation
• Phonon heat conduction across slippery interfaces in twisted graphite
• Nanotubes Motion on Layered Materials: A Registry Perspective
• Evidence of directional structural superlubricity and Lévy flights in a van der Waals heterostructure