Evaluation for frictional properties of fullerene/OLCs by molecular dynamics simulation

Abstract

For a new insight on solid lubricant of fullerenes and onion-like carbons (OLCs), we have performed scratch simulations on isolated fullerenes/OLCs and monolayer film of their array. Here, molecular dynamics simulation may overestimate bond-forming between the scratch surface and target carbons, so that we consider only the van der Waals interaction between the rigid diamond and fullerenes/OLCs. On this condition, both the isolated/layered fullerenes/OLCs doesn't show rotation but slip on the perfect (001) diamond surface, showing frictional coefficient lower than μ=0.05. On the other hand, the fullerenes/OLCs show rotation and higher frictional coefficients of μ=0.1-0.3, if we set surface roughness on both scratch walls. In this rotational friction, larger fullerenes/OLCs show smaller frictional coefficients, and the fullerenes shows higher frictional coefficient than OLCs of same size.©2014 The Society of Materials Science Japan.