Abstract
The traditional description of atomic-scale friction, as investigated in Friction force microscopy, in terms of mechanical stick-slip instabilities appears so successful that it obscures the actual mechanisms of frictional energy dissipation. More sophisticated theoretical approach, which takes into account damping explicitly, reveals the existence of some hidden, unexplained problems, like the universal nearly-critical damping and unexpectedly high value of the dissipation rate. In this paper, we combine analysis in the framework of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with simple atomistic modeling to show that the hidden problems of atomic scale friction find their origin in the nontrivial character of energy dissipation that is non-local and dominated by memory effects, which have not been addressed before in the context of dry, atomic-scale friction.
Highlights
The problem of friction is of enormous practical importance
The traditional description of atomic-scale friction, as investigated in Friction force microscopy, in terms of mechanical stick-slip instabilities appears so successful that it obscures the actual mechanisms of frictional energy dissipation
We combine analysis in the framework of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with simple atomistic modeling to show that the hidden problems of atomic scale friction find their origin in the nontrivial character of energy dissipation that is non-local and dominated by memory effects, which have not been addressed before in the context of dry, atomic-scale friction
Summary
The problem of friction is of enormous practical importance. fundamental understanding of the origin of dissipative surface forces on microscopic level is still far from being satisfactory. Another problem is due to the observation that the typical (nearly critical) value of the dissipation rate needed to explain FFM experiments turns out to be several orders of magnitude higher than we can expect on the basis of data collected for surface diffusion (see, e.g., [8]) of atomic particles and clusters and related phenomena. These observations force us to critically reconsider traditional views on frictional energy dissipation. We propose that the hidden problems of atomic scale friction find their origin in the nontrivial character of the dissipation that is non-local and dominated by memory effects, which―as far as we know―have not been addressed before in the context of dry, atomic-scale friction
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