Understanding the Frictional Properties of Boundary Films

该奖项的研究目标是提供对金属基底上无机薄膜摩擦性能的基本理解。 这种膜与通过与润滑剂添加剂反应而在表面上形成的涂层或反应性沉积膜有关。 研究策略包括精确测量在真空条件下生长和表征的定义明确的薄膜上的摩擦力。 这可确保研究干净且表征良好的薄膜，并确保其表面保持清洁，以确保进行精确且可重复的实验测量。 这些结果将使用量子力学计算在原子尺度上建模，以了解摩擦行为，并且实验系统已经被选择为使得它们足够简单，可以使用这种策略完全建模。 因此，研究的最终目标是在基本分子水平上了解滑动摩擦的起源以及滑动过程中能量耗散的机制。 如果成功，这项研究的结果将为制造低摩擦涂层的要求提供基本见解，并使润滑剂添加剂的化学成分能够设计成具有目标摩擦性能的涂层。 研究结果将在同行评审的期刊上发表，并将在国家和国际会议上发表，从而广泛提供给涂料和润滑剂制造商。 结果也将直接传达给当地的润滑油制造商。 研究生和本科生以及物理和化学将受益于一个跨学科项目，该项目涉及理论和实验之间的密切相互作用，具有现实世界的应用。

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.