Single-walled carbon nanotubes may serve as ideal probing tips to study friction, lubrication and wear at the microscale
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 09:51
in Physics & Chemistry
Studying microscopic interactions at single asperities is vital for the understanding of friction and lubrication at the macroscale. Surface probe instruments with carbon nanotube tips may enable such investigations, as now demonstrated in a theoretical study led by Ping Liu and Yong-Wei Zhang at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing. The researchers showed that short, single-walled, capped carbon nanotubes are able to capture the frictional characteristics of graphene with atomic resolution.