Conductive and tribological properties of TiN-Ag composite coatings under grease lubrication

Feihu LIN; Yanqiu XIA; Xin FENG

doi:10.1007/s40544-020-0373-4

Friction 2021, 9(4): 774-788 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-020-0373-4

Research Article |

Open Access | Issue | Published: 28 August 2020

Conductive and tribological properties of TiN-Ag composite coatings under grease lubrication

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Feihu LIN, Yanqiu XIA(

), Xin FENG

School of Energy Power and Mechanical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Keywords:

tribology, silver, contact resistance, lubricating grease

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LIN F, XIA Y, FENG X. Conductive and tribological properties of TiN-Ag composite coatings under grease lubrication. Friction, 2021, 9(4): 774-788. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-020-0373-4

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Abstract

TiN-Ag composite coatings were prepared by pulsed bias arc ion plating. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were applied to analyze the compositions of the coatings. Tribological properties of the coatings were studied using an MFT-R4000 ball-on-disk friction tester in the presence of lubricating greases containing multilayer graphene. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to analyze the worn surface compositions of the lubricating films. The results show that with the decrease in Ag in the film, hardness increased but electrical conductivity decreased. The coating with 10 at% Ag content shows the best friction-reducing and anti-wear properties, which can be attributed to the moderate content of Ag embedded in the TiN crystal gap that enhanced the grain bonding force to improve the anti-wear and self-lubricating ability. Graphene can be adsorbed on the coating as a solid lubricant.

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Conductive and tribological properties of TiN-Ag composite coatings under grease lubrication

Show Author's information Hide Author's Information Feihu LIN, Yanqiu XIA(

), Xin FENG

School of Energy Power and Mechanical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Abstract

Keywords: tribology, silver, contact resistance, lubricating grease

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Acknowledgements

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Publication history

Received: 26 September 2019

Revised: 15 November 2019

Accepted: 16 February 2020

Published: 28 August 2020

Issue date: August 2021

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (2172053) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51575181). We thank Li MA for assistantance in format modification. We thank Qianqian CHEN for analysis using XRD and Xia LI for analysis using XPS.

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