A Clue to Understand Environmental Influence on Friction and Wear of Diamond-Like Nanocomposite Thin Film

Abstract

The wear and friction of diamond-like nanocomposite (DLN) film have been investigated in air with different relative humidity (RH), under deionized (DI) water and saline solution. The structure of the film has been characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The result shows two interpenetrating network structure: a-C:H and a-Si:O, and they are interpenetrated by Si-C bonding. The tribological performance has been measured using ball-ondisc tribometer with tungsten carbide ball as counterbody at 10 N normal load. Results show that with increasing relative humidity (RH) from 35% to 80%, the coefficient of friction (COF) increases gradually from 0.005 to 0.074, whereas with increasing RH the wear factor decreases from 9.8 × 10 −8 mm 3 /Nm and attains a minimum value of 2.7 × 10 −8 mm 3 /Nm at 50% RH. With further increase of RH the wear factor increases again. Moreover, in DI water and especially in saline solution, both the COF and wear factor have been found to be significantly low. A clue has been interpreted to understand environmental dependency, considering the effect of surface dangling bonds, charge transfer, and chemical interactions.

Characterization and Applications of Diamond-like Nanocomposites: A Brief Review

“…It is already reported that, wear resistance of DLN with impurity like SiOx is 15-20 times lower than the wear resistance of DLC film [58] . It has been also reported [5] that wear resistance of DLN film is in the range of 0.2 -0.4 compared to wear factor of DLC film 0.5-1.…”

“…Stress can be further decreased by increasing the Si atomic concentartion [52] . Hardness and young modulus are decreased in DLN film in comparison with DLC film [22,45,46,53,54,58,59] .…”

Antireflective Nanocomposite Based Coating on Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells for Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Systems

“…Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) is used for DLN film synthesis [6]. The synthesis procedures attempt to exclude or minimize cluster formation in the sources, in the primary plasma, in the deposition region, and during film growth.…”

“…The growth rate of DLN films typically varies from 1.0 to 3.0 m/hr and depends on a number of factors. The details experimental procedure has already mentioned in the author's published paper [6,7]. By changing deposition conditions, the optical properties of DLN film can be varied over a wide range.…”

“…However, access to efficient, but differently colored, solar cells is important for the further development of BIPV system. In this paper, we have used Diamond-like nanocomposite layer [5][6][7] as an Antireflective Nanocomposite Based (ARNAB) coating material for crystalline silicon solar cell, and the impact of varying the color of an ARC upon the optical characteristics and efficiency of a solar cell is investigated. The overall transmittance and reflectance of a set of differently colored single layer ARCs are compared with multilayered ARNAB coating, all made using DLN layer deposition by PACVD technique.…”