On scale dependence in friction: Transition from intimate to monolayer-lubricated contact

Scale dependence in friction is studied in the present paper using the newly developed mesoscale friction tester (MFT). A transition in frictional shear strength from several hundreds of MPa to several tens of MPa was observed over a very limited range of contact radii (20–30 nm) in both ambient and dry environments. Thus, a single apparatus has been able to establish these two limits which are consistent with the values previously obtained from friction experiments using atomic force microscopy (AFM) and the surface force apparatus (SFA), respectively. Consequently, it is hypothesized here that a shear strength in the hundreds of MPa results from intimate contact (solid–solid) and a shear strength in the tens of MPa results from a monolayer-lubricated contact. Furthermore, both the probe size and the normal pressure govern the interfacial conditions in the contact zone and it is these conditions, rather than the nominal environment, which in turn determine the resulting shear strengths. A continuum analysis based on the Lifshitz theory for van der Waals interactions is used to explain the quantized shear strengths which were obtained from our experiments and previous AFM and SFA friction experiments. This quantized friction behavior [J.N. Israelachvili, P.M. McGuiggan, A.M. Homola, Science 240 (1988) 189] results from the discrete separation due to the different interfacial conditions that can arise between two sliding surfaces. The consistency between the analysis and the experimental results shows that this analysis is applicable for nonwear friction with single asperity contact.

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