Friction behaviour and wear resistance of diamond-like carbon films under cryogenic temperatures

Progresses on cryo-tribology: lubrication mechanisms, detection methods and applications

“…Tribological tests of solid lubricants at low temperatures are usually carried out in cryogenic liquid [8,10,11,19,24,28,77], low-temperature gas [5,39,46,58,[78][79][80][81],…”

“…Most hard DLC films (hydrogen-containing a-C: H, metal-doped Me-C: H) failed rapidly owing to the mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficient [83] and descending low-temperature toughness, while DLC (Si-C: H) with a silicon gradient-doped structure showed better lubrication performance at low temperatures [37]. In addition, the friction and wear of DLC films at low temperatures are also related to the surface roughness and counterface, and lower friction and wear were obtained when self-paired [24,60].…”

“…From the 1980s to the end of the 20th century, Michael, Rabinowicz, and Iwasa [22,23] of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S.A combined the theory of adhesion friction and material transfer by studying the tribological performance of polymers and polymeric composites with fillers of solid lubricants and fabrics or particles at 4.2, 77, and 293 K. Their results indicated that the difference in transfer film formation between polymers and polymeric composites leads to dissimilarity in the friction mechanism. It is worth mentioning that these studies and other investigations on coating materials such as DLC [24] and MoS 2 [11] at cryogenic temperatures by researchers at Iwate University in Japan [10,11,25] and B. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering in Ukraine [24,26,27] were promoted by demands on cryogenic superconducting devices in this period.…”

Development of a lubricant-free revolving vane compressor

“…Diamond-like carbon (DLC) is a self-lubricating material with low coefficients of friction which further decrease with increasing load and sliding speeds, superb wear resistance and a wide range of operating temperatures [72][73][74][75][76][77][78]. By careful selection and optimization of a sliding surface for DLC, coefficients of friction lower than 0.1 and wear rates of less than 10 -7 mm 3 N -1 m -1 can be achieved [73].…”

“…DLC has good mechanical properties; it is highly wear resistant and maintains this property even under cryogenic conditions [72] when most materials would have undergone brittle failure. Due to its high mechanical strength, a DLC coating is able protect the components from operational wear [74] while maintaining low coefficients of friction.…”