The research objective of this award is to provide a fundamental understanding of the frictional properties of thin inorganic films on metal substrates. Such films are relevant to coatings or reactively deposited films that are formed on surfaces by reaction with lubricant additives. The research strategy involves making precise measurements of frictional forces on well-defined thin films that are grown and characterized under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. This ensures that clean and well-characterized films are studied and that their surfaces remain clean to ensure that precise and reproducible experimental measurements are made. These results will be modeled at the atomic scale using quantum mechanical calculations to understand the frictional behavior and the experimental systems have been selected such that they are sufficiently simple that they can be fully modeled using this strategy. The ultimate goal of the research is thus to understand, at a fundamental molecular level, the origins of sliding friction and the mechanisms by which energy is dissipated during sliding.
If successful, the results of this research will provide fundamental insights into the requirements for fabricating low-friction coatings and to enable the chemistry of lubricant additives to be designed to form coatings with targeted frictional properties. The results will be disseminated by publication in peer-reviewed journals and will be presented at national and international conferences and will thus be widely available to coatings and lubricant manufacturers. The results will also be communicated directly to local lubricant manufacturers. Graduate and undergraduate students and in physics and chemistry will benefit from an interdisciplinary project involving a close interplay between theory and experiment on a project that has real-world applications.
