Investigating the Effect of Interface Structure on Friction at the Nanoscale
The physical phenomenon of friction is the main source of energy loss in a number of technical applications and industrial processes. Despite this fact, which holds significant economic importance, a complete understanding of fund...
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Descripción del proyecto
The physical phenomenon of friction is the main source of energy loss in a number of technical applications and industrial processes. Despite this fact, which holds significant economic importance, a complete understanding of fundamental physical principles governing frictional processes is still lacking. Considering that an ability to predict and control macroscopic friction depends on accurate investigations of friction at the nanometer scale, the research area of nanotribology –the science of friction, lubrication and wear at the nanoscale– has been established about 25 years ago. The main scientific tool that spearheaded developments in this field, the friction force microscope (FFM), provided researchers with a great deal of insight regarding frictional properties of nanoscale single-asperity contacts on different substrates as a function of various experimental parameters. Despite this success, many open questions remain regarding friction at the nanoscale, due to inherent limitations of the single-asperity FFM technique in terms of contact area, choice of materials, and poorly-characterized interface structures. Being motivated by recent developments in the field, we propose in this grant application to investigate the frictional properties of structurally well-defined, crystalline gold nanoislands on a number of substrates such as graphite and graphene using commercially available atomic force microscopes, as a function of island size, shape and crystallographic direction of motion. Additionally, we propose to use nanoislands made from bulk metallic glass (BMG) in amorphous and crystalline form, to test the influence of interface crystallinity on friction at the nanoscale. It is expected that the 4-year research plan described in this proposal will contribute significantly to the understanding of structure-friction relationships at the nanoscale, bringing the scientific community closer to a complete physical picture of the fundamentals of friction.