Abstract
Carbon films with two different kinds of sp2 nanocrystallited structure were investigated to study the stick-slip friction with the in-situ and ex-situ tests. In-situ transmission electron microscope (TEM) observation and nanofriction tests revealed that the origins of stick and slip varied with shear stress and film deformation. At the stick stage, shear stress gradually increased with the contact strengthened until reached the shear strength to break the interfacial adhesion; at the slip stage, the shear stress decreased and accompanied with film deformation. During the sliding process, adhesive deformation resulted in the large stick-slip step while ploughing deformation led to a smoother step. Ex-situ nanofriction tests on a series of sp2 nanocrystallited carbon films with different irradiation energies showed the expected sliding behavior with the in-situ results. This study first clarified the mechanism of stick-slip friction with the in-situ TEM observation, which plays the important role for the micro and nano application of sp2 nanocrystallited carbon films.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance on HRTEM observation received from the Electron Microscope Center of the Shenzhen University. The research work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51975382) and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2018A030313908).
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Xue FAN. She received her bachelor and Ph.D. degrees from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2006 and 2012, respectively. She worked at University of Tokyo from October 2010 to November 2011, and at Xi’an Jiaotong University from June 2012 to December 2014. She joined the Institute of Nanosurface Science and Engineering (INSE) at Shenzhen University in April 2015, and now she is an associate professor. Her research interests include the nanostructured carbon nanosurface, in-situ transmission electron microscope (TEM) friction and wear, and electron-carrying tribology.
Zelong HU. He received his B.S. degree in 2018 from Hubei Engineering University and M.S. degree in 2021 from Shenzhen University. Now he is a Ph.D. student of mechanical engineering at Shenzhen University. His research interests include nanostructured carbon films and tribological properties and mechanisms with in-situ TEM.
Wenchao HUANG. He received his B.S. degree in 2018 from Zhaoqing University and M.S. degree in 2021 from Shenzhen University. His research interest is in-situ electro-mechanical property of nanostructured carbon film.
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Fan, X., Hu, Z. & Huang, W. In-situ TEM studies on stick-slip friction characters of sp2 nanocrystallited carbon films. Friction 10, 1635–1649 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-021-0551-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-021-0551-z