Tribological Investigations Using Friction Force Microscopy

Abstract

Many attempts have been made in recent centuries to investigate friction, adhesion, lubrication, and wear. Most of the experimental approaches and theories were based on macroscopic experiments, such as tensile and indentation tests. For a long time, only the bulk properties of the materials were considered.Late in this century a new term was created combining all of the above-mentioned properties which deal with the science of interacting material interfaces in relative motion: tribology. The state of the art of science today reveals that processing in nature depends strongly on interfaces that cannot be described only by bulk properties. Tribologists realize they must study the sliding surfaces by analytical surface-science tools. With the surface force apparatus developed by J.N. Israelachvili and D. Tabor, we have a surface analysis tool that provides new insight into the field of macroscopic sliding contact of lubricated systems.After Amontons' laws were established as a first attempt to describe sliding friction analytically, theories were advanced over the course of this century. A classic discipline was developed: contact mechanics. More quantitative treatments of friction were developed by various authors. The energy dissipation in most processes in tribology induced the theorists to consider the sliding bodies as spring models creating phonon-phonon interactions. And with modern computer facilities, they started to perform computational experiments whenever classical experiments could not provide information on the submicron scale.