Friction and wear are major limiting factors for the development and commercial implementation of devices fabricated by surface micromachining techniques. These tribological properties are studied using a polycrystalline silicon nanotractor device, which provides abundant, quantitative information about friction and wear at an actual microelectromechanical system (MEMS) interface. This in situ ...

Energy consumption and tribological properties could be improved by proper design of surface texture in friction. However, some literature focused on investigating their performance under high temperature. In the study, different groove surface textures were fabricated on steels by a laser machine, and their tribological behaviors were experimentally studied with the employment of the friction ...

In order to be suitable for tribological applications, polymeric materials, which can usually exhibit mechanical strength, lightness, ease of processing, versatility and low cost, together with acceptable thermal and environmental resistances, have to show good abrasion and wear resistance. This target is not easy to achieve, since the viscoelasticity of polymeric materials makes the analysis o...

The low hardness and poor tribological performance of aluminum alloy as moving component greatly restricts their wide applications in automotive fields. In this letter, an attempt to deposit gradient Ti/TiN/Si/(TiC/a-C:H) multi-layer on aluminum alloy is thus effectively performed by a combined arc ion plating and magnetron sputtering process based on the concept of involving coatings with a fu...

The PVD techniques range over a wide variety of applications from decorative, to high temperature superconducting films. The thickness of the deposits can vary from angstroms to millimeters. A very large number of inorganic materials—metals, alloys, compounds, and mixtures—as well as some organic materials can be deposited using Physical vapour Deposition (PVD) technologies. Traditionally, the ...

The mechanical and tribological properties of electrospun fiber mats are of paramount importance to their utility in a large number of applications. In this work, mats of electrospun fibers of poly(hexamethylene adipamide) (PA 6,6) with average fiber diameter of 238 ± 22 nm are characterized for their crystal structure as well as their mechanical and tribological properties. Post-spin thermal a...

The menisci protect the articular cartilage by reducing contact pressure in the knee. To restore their function after injury, a new silk fibroin replacement scaffold was developed. To elucidate its tribological properties, friction of the implant was tested against cartilage and glass, where the latter is typically used in tribological cartilage studies. The silk scaffold exhibited a friction c...

Ultrafine particles are often used as lubricant additives because they are capable of entering tribological contacts to reduce friction and protect surfaces from wear. They tend to be more stable than molecular additives under high thermal and mechanical stresses during rubbing. It is highly desirable for these particles to remain well dispersed in oil without relying on molecular ligands. Borr...

This paper reports on the effects of nitrogen dilution on the structure, bonding and tribological properties of nitrogendoped amorphous carbon films (a-C:H:N) deposited by r.f. glow discharge from CH4-N2 mixtures on silicon substrates. For different N2 fractions, film structure and chemical composition were examined using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The mechan...