Power law load dependence of atomic friction

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of the dynamics of a tip scanning a graphite surface as a function of the applied load. From the analysis of the lateral forces, we extract the friction force and the corrugation of the effective tip-surface interaction potential. We find both the friction force and potential amplitude to have a power law dependence on applied load with exponent $\sim 1.6$. We interpret these results as characteristic of sharp undeformable tips in contrast to the case of macroscopic and elastic microscopic contacts.

arXiv comment4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Thermal effects on atomic friction

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Modeling friction: From nanoscale to mesoscale
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• Atomistic simulations of the sliding friction of graphene flakes
• A survey of interlayer interaction models for graphene and other 2D materials