Abstract
Nowadays it is accepted that the friction force is a combined effect arising from various phenomena: adhesive forces, capillary forces, contact elasticity, topography, surface chemistry, and generation of a third body, etc. Any of them can dominate depending on the experimental force and length scales of the study. Typical forces in macro-tribology are in the Newtons, while are reduced to milli-/micro-Newtons, and nano-Newtons in micro- and nano-tribology, respectively. In this paper, experimental friction results from fullerene like CN x films and single-crystal Si at the three scales will be discussed. The complex and broad variety of processes and phenomena connected with the dry friction coefficient at the macro-, micro-, and nano-scale point of view will be highlighted.
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This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
A preliminary version of this work was presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Tribology of IFToMM, Luleå, Sweden, 2013.
Esteban BROITMAN. He received his PhD degree in physics from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1997. He has been doing research and teaching at the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), The College of William and Mary (USA), and Carnegie Mellon University (USA). He is currently a guest professor at Linköping University (Sweden). His research activities focus on the physical properties of thin films deposited by vapor-phase deposition and sol-gel methods, like microstructure evolution, mechanical and tribological properties. His particular interest is in the area of thin film micro- and nano-tribology.
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Broitman, E. The nature of the frictional force at the macro-, micro-, and nano-scales. Friction 2, 40–46 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0037-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-014-0037-3