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Formation of intermittent covalent bonds at high contact pressure limits superlow friction on epitaxial graphene

Bartosz Szczefanowicz1,*, Takuya Kuwahara2,3,*, Tobin Filleter4, Andreas Klemenz2, Leonhard Mayrhofer2, Roland Bennewitz1, and Michael Moseler2,5,†

  • 1INM–Leibniz-Institute for New Materials and Physics Department, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
  • 2Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM, MicroTribology Center μTC, Woehlerstrasse 11, 79108 Freiburg, Germany
  • 3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Osaka Metropolitan University, 3-3-138 Sugimoto, Osaka, 558–8585, Japan
  • 4Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto M5S 3G8, Canada
  • 5Department of Physics, University of Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg, Germany

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †michael.moseler@iwm.fraunhofer.de
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012049 – Published 30 March, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L012049

Abstract

Epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001) exhibits superlow friction due to its weak out-of-plane interactions. Friction-force microscopy with silicon tips shows an abrupt increase of friction by one order of magnitude above a threshold normal force. Density-functional tight-binding simulations suggest that this wearless high-friction regime involves an intermittent sp3 rehybridization of graphene at contact pressure exceeding 10 GPa. The simultaneous formation of covalent bonds with the tip's silica surface and the underlying SiC interface layer establishes a third mechanism limiting the superlow friction on epitaxial graphene, in addition to dissipation in elastic instabilities and in wear processes.

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L012049– Published 30 March, 2023
  • Received 2 November 2022
  • Revised 13 February 2023
  • Accepted 22 February 2023
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