Lubrication of Si-Based Tribopairs with a Hydrophobic Ionic Liquid: The Multiscale Influence of Water (original) (raw)

ArticleMarch 16, 2018

Lubrication of Si-Based Tribopairs with a Hydrophobic Ionic Liquid: The Multiscale Influence of Water

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• Andrea Arcifa
  Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
• Antonella Rossi
  Antonella Rossi
  Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
  Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Cittadella Universitaria di Monserrato, I-09100 Cagliari, Italy
• Shivaprakash N. Ramakrishna
  Shivaprakash N. Ramakrishna
  Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
• Rosa Espinosa-Marzal
  Rosa Espinosa-Marzal
  University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, Urbana 61801, Illinois United States
• Alexis Sheehan
  Alexis Sheehan
  University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign, Urbana 61801, Illinois United States
• Nicholas D. Spencer*
  Nicholas D. Spencer
  Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 5, CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland
  *****N. D. Spencer. E-mail: [email protected]

The Journal of Physical Chemistry C

Cite this: J. Phys. Chem. C 2018, 122, 13

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research-article

Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society

Abstract

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This work aims to elucidate the role of water on the tribological behavior of silicon-based surfaces lubricated with a hydrophobic ionic liquid (IL), by means of a multitechnique, multiscale approach. At the nanoscale, the presence of water at the interface was found to promote adhesion between a sharp silicon tip and a silicon substrate, when submerged in the IL. In line with this finding, in the case of samples that had been exposed to humid air, lateral force microscopy at low loads revealed a significant contribution of adhesion to friction. Under dry conditions, a low-to-high friction-regime transition is observed at low loads, which is reminiscent of the behavior already observed at the nanoscale in previous studies on IL-mediated lubrication. The comparison of friction-vs-load curves from tests carried out under both humid and dry conditions suggests that a similar mechanism of energy dissipation, presumably involving solid–solid contact between sliding counterparts, is established when applied loads are sufficiently high. The macroscopic behavior of a fused silica pin sliding against a Si (100) substrate in a ball-on-disk configuration was investigated over a wide range of sliding speeds. Wear was evaluated by means of both optical microscopy and profilometry. Changes in the surface chemistry and near-surface structure of the contact area following tribotesting were characterized by both Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies. Macrotribological tests show that, for sufficiently low sliding speeds, the water adsorbed at the solid/IL interface promotes a tribochemical form of wear. However, at high sliding speeds, a regime of wear characterized by extended damage in the form of plastic deformation and fracture dominates, regardless of the presence of water in the IL. Under these conditions, the prevailing mechanism of friction is likely to be related to the welding and rupture of asperity/asperity junctions, and a direct comparison of LFM results might be not possible. In contrast, when in the presence of humid air and at low sliding speed, the absence of plastic deformation in the near-surface region suggests that pressures within the asperity–asperity contacts are in the range of those existing in the LFM experiments described here.

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Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society

Supporting Information

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The Supporting Information is available free of charge on the ACS Publications website at DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b01671.

• Section S1, the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) survey spectra of tribostressed silicon discs lubricated with [EMIM] TFSI in the presence of humid air (Figure S1) and a description of the high-resolution spectra reported in Figure 6; section S2, additional data and calculations concerning lateral force (LFM) experiments are presented, including a cross-section of AFM tips used in LFM experiments obtained by reverse-tip imaging (Figure S2), values of friction force measured vs applied load with a silicon tip on the surface of a silicon wafer under [EMIM] TFSI and in humid conditions (Figure S3, the tip used for the experiment was used without any cleaning/activation treatment before the test), and the JKR model estimating the area and pressure of the contact between the AFM tip and substrate; section S3, an estimation of the local temperature increase in the contact between a silica sphere and a silicon wafer lubricated with [EMIM] TFSI and in humid conditions (PDF)

• jp8b01671_si_001.pdf (279.4 kb)

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The Journal of Physical Chemistry C

Cite this: J. Phys. Chem. C 2018, 122, 13

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Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society

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