Search

Macroscale superlubricity on engineering steel surfaces offers a promising solution for minimizing friction and wear in engineering applications. However, achieving superlubricity typically requires a long running‐in period, which may result in significant wear for the friction pair. Herein, a new lubricant with superlubricating properties is rationally designed by using polyethylene glycol (PEG) and critic acid (CA) under complexing effect with a running‐in period of about 800 s. Importantly, the introduction of carbon quantum dots (CQDs) obtained from the pyrolysis of CA into PEG aqueous solution shortens the running‐in period for achieving macroscale superlubricity (µ ≈ 0.005) between steel/steel contact to 44 s. The corresponding wear rate (1.15 × 10−7 mm3 N−1 m−1) on the steel disk is reduced by 77% due to the shorter running‐in time. Furthermore, the surface analysis combined with the molecular dynamics simulations demonstrates that CQDs easily adsorb on the surface of the friction pair, forming a carbon film that reduces interaction energy between the lubricant molecules and the substrate. This work provides new insights into the lubrication mechanism of CQDs and contributes to the design of liquid superlubricants with short running‐in periods and low wear rates on engineering steel surfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase transformation between bcc and fcc in Fe–Ni nanoparticle has been studied by using molecular dynamics simulation with an embedded atom method. The transformation has been explored by designing the nanoparticles with different initial structures, sizes and elemental distributions at various Ni concentrations. The results show that the structural transformation is strongly related to the Ni content and elemental distribution. Initial fcc structure transforms to bcc for a lower Ni content and bcc transforms to fcc for a higher Ni content. The transformation is accompanied with a sharp reduction in energy even for the nanoparticle with a large size. Furthermore, lattice distortion first occurs before the transformation. The transformation from fcc to bcc is occurred by elongating fcc (100) to bcc (110) and that from bcc to fcc by compressing bcc (110) to fcc (100). The reason is that the nanoparticle has a low energy state for bcc structure with a lower Ni content and also for fcc structure with a higher Ni content. The coexistence of bcc and fcc phases appears with the change of elemental distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of Ag atomic segregation from the inner (100) or (111) planes on the melting of Ag-Pd clusters with different sizes by a molecular dynamics simulation. The results show that Ag segregation leads to the atomic energy decreases with increasing the temperature. Furthermore, the effect of the (100) segregation is larger than that of the (111) segregation. Meanwhile, the influence of segregation on the energy decreases with increasing the cluster size. The melting points of the clusters without segregation are the largest, followed by the clusters with a (111) and (100) segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural evolutions of Co 561 clusters supported on the Cu(010) substrate were studied by molecular dynamics simulation using an embedded atom method. Energy, snapshot, pair distribution function and epitaxial factor were used to analyze the effects of supported position, configuration and temperature on the structural evolutions. It is found that the energy of the cluster changes significantly with varying the supported position and the original configuration. The most stable supported position is (111) facet. As a function of configuration the stability decreases in the order: icosahedron > truncated octahedron > decahedron > cuboctahedron > sphere. Supported (111) facet changes to stack along the (100) of substrate. Epitaxial growth on the substrate occurs for all configurations. The epitaxial temperature and the amount of epitaxial atoms are related to the configuration. The epitaxial growth is adverse to the stability of the cluster, while the epitaxy has no effect on the crystal structure of the supported cluster. The energy of the cluster is reduced by the epitaxial growth and atomic penetration into the substrate but is enhanced by the distortion of the cluster on the substrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]