Abstract:The role of surface protective additives becomes vital when operating conditions become severe and moving components operate in a boundary lubrication regime. After protecting film is slowly removed by rubbing, it can regenerate through the tribochemical reaction of the additives at the contact. However, there are limitations about the regeneration of the protecting film when additives are totally consumed. On the other hand, there are a lot of hard coatings to protect the steel surface from wear. These can enable the functioning of tribological systems, even in adverse lubrication conditions. However, hard coatings usually make the friction coefficient higher, because of their high interfacial shear strength. Amongst hard coatings, diamond-like carbon (DLC) is widely used, because of its relatively low friction and superior wear resistance. In practice, conventional lubricants that are essentially formulated for a steel/steel surface are still used for lubricating machine component surfaces provided with protective coatings, such as DLCs, despite the fact that the surface properties of coatings are quite different from those of steel. It is therefore important that the design of additive molecules and their interaction with coatings should be re-considered. The main aim of this paper is to discuss the DLC and the additive combination that enable tribofilm formation and effective lubrication of tribological systems.