Comparative study on effects of load and sliding distance on amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a-C:H) coating and tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) coating under base-oil lubrication condition

In this study, the lubricated friction and wear associated with diamond-like coatings (DLCs) of amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a-C:H) and hydrogen-free tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) were comparatively analyzed. The effects of load and sliding distance on the wear and friction behaviors of the coatings were studied under a boundary-lubrication condition using a poly-alpha-olefin base oil. The DLC-coated cylindrical specimens were slid with their central axes perpendicular to the sliding direction against a rotating steel counterface. The results show that the friction coefficient of the ta-C coating was lower than that of the a-C:H coating, though a graphitized layer was detected both inside and outside the wear scar of the a-C:H coating. Under a relatively low applied load (5 N), the specific wear rate of the ta-C coating was considerably lower than that of the a-C:H coating. When the load was increased to a critical value of 10 N, the specific wear rate of the ta-C coating increased rapidly to 3-5 times that of the a-C:H coating. However, the specific wear rate of the a-C:H coating decreased significantly when the load exceeded 10 N, which was consistently maintained thereafter. With the increase in the sliding distance, the specific wear rate of the ta-C coating increased rapidly. In comparison to the ta-C coating, the specific wear rate of the a-C:H coating decreased only slightly with the increase in the sliding distance; moreover, when the sliding distance exceeded 125 m, the specific wear rate of the a-C:H coating became much lower than that of the ta-C coating. The results of Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy show that the coatings were influenced by different types of wear mechanisms when slid under pure base-oil boundary-lubrication conditions.