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An extremely low friction state was observed on the gold surface induced by applying a specific negative potential in cationic surfactant solution. The friction force showed a remarkable reduction from 8.3 to 3.5 × 10−2 nN (reduced by 99.6%) with increasing the period of negative applied potential, and the final friction coefficient could reduce down to 3 × 10−4. The extremely low friction state was robust, and it also exhibited an excellent load bearing capacity, which cannot be damaged by a high load. Moreover, the extremely low friction state achieved under negative applied potential could keep stable even after the removal of potential, but failed in a short time, once a specific positive potential was applied. It was demonstrated that there was a stable electro-adsorption of surfactant molecules on the gold surface induced by applying a negative potential, leading to the formation of a bilayer structure on the gold surface. The hydration layers of the bilayer on the gold surface and micelles on the silica probe provided a shear plane with an extremely low shear strength, leading to the extremely low friction state on the gold surface. This study provides a method to achieve extremely low friction state by applied potential.


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Extremely low friction on gold surface with surfactant molecules induced by surface potential

Show Author's information Tianyang GAOJinjin LI( )Weiqi WANGJianbin LUO( )
State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract

An extremely low friction state was observed on the gold surface induced by applying a specific negative potential in cationic surfactant solution. The friction force showed a remarkable reduction from 8.3 to 3.5 × 10−2 nN (reduced by 99.6%) with increasing the period of negative applied potential, and the final friction coefficient could reduce down to 3 × 10−4. The extremely low friction state was robust, and it also exhibited an excellent load bearing capacity, which cannot be damaged by a high load. Moreover, the extremely low friction state achieved under negative applied potential could keep stable even after the removal of potential, but failed in a short time, once a specific positive potential was applied. It was demonstrated that there was a stable electro-adsorption of surfactant molecules on the gold surface induced by applying a negative potential, leading to the formation of a bilayer structure on the gold surface. The hydration layers of the bilayer on the gold surface and micelles on the silica probe provided a shear plane with an extremely low shear strength, leading to the extremely low friction state on the gold surface. This study provides a method to achieve extremely low friction state by applied potential.

Keywords: surfactant, extremely low friction, applied potential, load bearing capacity

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Received: 21 October 2021
Revised: 20 January 2022
Accepted: 19 February 2022
Published: 31 May 2022
Issue date: April 2023

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© The author(s) 2022.

Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFA0711003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51775295 and 51527901), and the Foundation from State Key Laboratory of Tribology (SKLT2019C01).

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