Lubricants are often contaminated by water in different ways. Water-polluted lubricants extremely accelerate wear corrosion, leading to the deterioration of lubricity performance. Recently, multiphase media superwettability has been developed to endow one surface with compatible functions, such as on-demand separation of oily wastewater. However, realizing the robustness of the dual superlyophobic surface to solve water-caused lubricant deterioration and water contamination as needed remains challenges. Herein, a robust dual superlyophobic membrane is presented to realize on-demand separation for various lubricant–water emulsions. Compared to pure lubricants, the purified lubricants have equivalent tribology performance, which are much better than that of water-polluted lubricants. The as-prepared membrane maintains dual superlyophobicity, high-efficient for water or lubricant purification, and excellent tribology performance of the purified lubricant, even after immersion in hot liquids for 24 h, multicycle separation, and sandpaper abrasion for 50 cycles. Water-polluted lubricant extremely accelerates wear corrosion to promote catalytic dehydrogenation of lubricants, generating too much harmful carbon-based debris. This work shows great guiding significance for recovering the tribology performance of water-polluted lubricants and purifying water by the dual superlyophobic membrane.

The issues regarding energy dissipation and component damage caused by the interface friction between a friction pair attract enormous attention to friction reduction. The key-enabling technique to realize friction reduction is the use of lubricants. The lubricants smooth the contact interfaces, achieving an ultralow friction contact, which is called superslippery or superlubricity. At present, superslippery and superlubricity are two isolated research topics. There is a lack of unified definition on superslippery and superlubricity from the viewpoint of tribology. Herein, this review aims at exploring the differences and relations between superslippery and superlubricity from their origin and application scenarios. Meanwhile, the challenges for developing superslippery surface and superlubricity surface are discussed. In addition, perspectives on the interactive development of these two surfaces are presented. We hope that our discussion can provide guidance for designing superslippery or superlubricity surfaces by using varies drag-reduction technologies.

Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) based on triboelectrification has attracted wide attention due to its effective utilization of green energy sources such as marine energy. However, researches about liquid–liquid triboelectrification are still scanty as solid–liquid triboelectrification has been widely studied. Herein, this work focuses on the hydrophobic/slippery substrate–water interfacial triboelectrification based on the solid friction materials of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanoparticles. The hydrophobic/slippery substrate–water interfacial triboelectrification are studied by assembling PTFE coated Al sheets and perfluoropolyether (PFPE) infused PTFE coated Al sheets (formed the slippery lubricant-infused surfaces (SLIPSs)) as the friction electrode, and water as liquid friction materials, respectively. The results show that the hydrophobic TENG output performances improved as the PTFE nanoparticles cumulating, and the SLIPSs TENG output performances increased with the thinner PFPE thickness. Both the triboelectrification behavior of hydrophobic/SLIPSs TENG assembled in this work are dominated by the electron transfer. Thanks to the introduction of SLIPSs, the SLIPSs TENG exhibits superior stability and durability than the hydrophobic TENG. The investigation of hydrophobic/slippery substrate–water interfacial triboelectrification contributes to optimize the TENG performances, and expands the application in harsh environments including low temperature and high humidity on the ocean.

Slippery lubricant-infused surfaces exhibit excellent fog-harvesting capacities compared with superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic surfaces. However, lubricant depletion is typically unavoidable under dynamic conditions, and reinfused oil is generally needed to recover the fog-harvesting capacity. Herein, an effective strategy for delaying the depletion of lubricant to prolong the service life of fog harvesting is proposed. An ultrathin transparent lubricant self-replenishing slippery surface was fabricated via facile one-step solvent evaporation polymerization. The gel film of the lubricant self-replenishing slippery surface, which was embedded with oil microdroplets, was attached to glass slides via the phase separation and evaporation of tetrahydrofuran. The gel film GFs-150 (with oil content 150 wt% of aminopropyl-terminated polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS–NH₂)) exhibited superior slippery and fog-harvesting performance to other gel films. Furthermore, the slippery surfaces with the trait of oil secretion triggered by mechanical stress exhibited better fog-harvesting capabilities and longer service life than surfaces without the function of lubricant self-replenishment. The lubricant self-replenishing, ultrathin, and transparent slippery surfaces reported herein have considerable potential for applications involving narrow spaces, visualization, long service life, etc.

Two lithium-based ionic liquids (ILs, L-C3N3, and L-P3N3) were synthesized and evaluated as novel lubricant additives for multiply alkylated cyclopentanes (MACs). They were found to be approximately 1.0% soluble in MACs at room temperature (RT), whereas traditional ILs, such as 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (L-B102), 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (L-P106), and 1-ethyl-3- methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (L-F102), could not be dissolved in this base oil. Friction tests indicated that these ILs exhibit excellent friction-reducing and anti-wear properties both at RT and at 100 ℃. They can improve the tribological properties of MACs at RT to a greater extent than the commonly used lubricant zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (T204), even at a concentration of 0.1%. The load ramp test showed that MACs with L-C3N3 and L-P3N3 also exhibit high load-carrying capabilities. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectrometer (XPS) results indicated that physical adsorption and complex tribochemical reactions occurred between the ILs and metal surfaces during the sliding process, thereby forming a surface protective film that significantly contributed to the excellent tribological properties of the new ILs.