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Humidity Effects on In Situ Vapor Phase Lubrication with n-Pentanol

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Abstract

The effect of water vapor on n-pentanol vapor phase lubrication (VPL) was studied with a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) side-wall tribometer, a pin-on-disc tribometer, and attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) spectroscopy. The n-pentanol vapor pressure was fixed at 50 % relative to its saturation vapor pressure (P sat = ~2.2 Torr at room temperature), which is sufficient to maintain a monolayer of n-pentanol on a SiO2 surface in a dry Ar environment. As the relative humidity (RH) was increased from zero to 30 %, ATR-IR measurements showed that the water adsorption on the surface increases and the adsorbed pentanol thickness decreases by 60 %. These changes in the adsorption isotherm were manifested as higher, and more scattered friction coefficients observed during the MEMS tribometer operation. The maximum RH tolerance appeared to be 25–30 % RH above which the MEMS tribometer failed to operate reliably. In contrast, the n-pentanol VPL efficiency was not affected significantly during the macro-scale pin-on-disc tribometer tests. These results imply that the friction behavior of the asperity contacts in MEMS is more susceptible to co-adsorption of water than the friction behavior of macro-scale contacts.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CMMI-1000021) and Sandia National Laboratories. Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.

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  1. Anna L. Barnette

    Present address: Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Allentown, PA, 18195, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Anna L. Barnette & Seong H. Kim

  2. Sandia National Laboratories, Materials Science and Engineering Center, Albuquerque, NM, 87185, USA

    J. Anthony Ohlhausen & Michael T. Dugger

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  1. Anna L. Barnette
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  2. J. Anthony Ohlhausen
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  3. Michael T. Dugger
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Correspondence to Michael T. Dugger or Seong H. Kim.

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Barnette, A.L., Ohlhausen, J.A., Dugger, M.T. et al. Humidity Effects on In Situ Vapor Phase Lubrication with n-Pentanol. Tribol Lett 55, 177–186 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-014-0345-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-014-0345-9

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