Tribology Commons^™

A Comparison Between Graphene And Ws2 As Solid Lubricant Additives To Aluminum For Automobile Applications, Sara Rengifo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to compare graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) and WS₂ as solid lubricant additives to aluminum in order to reduce friction and wear. The central hypothesis of this work relied on lubricating properties of 2D materials, which consist layers that slip under a shear force.

Two aluminum composites were made (Al-2 vol.% GNP and Al-2 vol.% WS₂) by spark plasma sintering. Tribological properties were evaluated by ball-on-disk wear tests at room temperature (RT) and 200^°C.

WS₂ not only presented the lowest COF (0.66) but also improved the wear resistance of aluminum …

Identification Of Multiple Oscillation States Of Carbon Nanotube Tipped Cantilevers Interacting With Surfaces In Dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy, Mark Strus, Arvind Raman

Birck and NCN Publications

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have gained increased interest in dynamic atomic force microscopy (dAFM) as sharp, flexible, conducting, nonreactive tips for high-resolution imaging, oxidation lithography, and electrostatic force microscopy. By means of theory and experiments we lay out a map of several distinct tapping mode AFM oscillation states for CNT tipped AFM cantilevers: namely, noncontact attractive regime oscillation, intermittent contact with CNT slipping or pinning, or permanent contact with the CNT in point or line contact with the surface while the cantilever oscillates with large amplitude. Each state represents fundamentally different origins of CNT-surface interactions, CNT tip-substrate dissipation, and phase contrast …