A tribological study of a novel pre-treatment with linseed oil bonded to mercaptosilane treated aluminium

Abstract

In sheet metal forming processes, lubricants are necessary in order to prevent galling, i.e. material transfer from the sheet metal to the tool surface and to control friction. Today, dry lubricants are increasingly being used for solving this problem. Among these, multifunctional coatings, often referred to as permanent coatings, normally based on organic resins, are lubricants which have the potential to increase the formability without additional lubrication, give corrosion protection, fingerprint and scratch resistance during handling and transport and finally, serve as a pre-treatment before painting. With increasing concern about the environment and human health it is important to develop new environmentally friendly pre-treatments in the surface engineering of metal substrates. This is mainly due to the toxic and carcinogenic properties of the chromium based surface pre-treatments frequently used in the industry. During the last decade, simple solution-dip silane based pre-treatments have emerged as promising candidates for the replacement of currently used pre-treatments of metals. A silane film can give good corrosion protection properties but is often too thin to prevent galling under a forming operation. A renewed interest for using vegetable oils in surface engineering has appeared lately due to several factors. Vegetable oils are renewable resources, modern technology can produce more well defined and pure oils, and the fatty acid content can be altered with modern crops development techniques. With the proper choice of silane pre-treatment of a metal surface, a vegetable oil can be coupled to the surface and give the desired lubrication properties. In this paper, aluminium sheets have been pre-treated with a mercapto silane after which a vegetable oil has been attached. The coupling between the silane and the oil was obtained through a photoinduced thiol-ene reaction using UV-radiation. The influence of different process parameters on the friction and wear behaviour was evaluated using modified scratch testing. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and contact angle measurements were used to characterise the as-deposited surface films and their tribological behaviour, i.e. failure mechanisms. The results obtained show that the unsaturated vegetable oil has reacted with the thiol groups via the thiol-ene reaction forming a surface film. Also, the results show that the thickness of the films is of importance for the tribological characteristics, i.e. a too thin layer (less than 25 Å in the present work) results in high friction and severe adhesive wear. However, a thicker layer with enhanced load carrying capacity can be produced with a proper heat treatment of the deposited vegetable oil. Finally, the results show that thick (more than 200 Å in the present work) silane films are sensitive to brittle fracture when exposed to a sliding contact.