Superlubricity in bilayer isomeric tellurene and graphene/tellurene van der Waals heterostructures

Abstract

The molecular dynamics (MD) method was used to study the superlubricity in two-dimensional tellurene isomers (α-Te/β-Te), and in two-dimensional tellurene and graphene (G/α-Te, G/β-Te) heterostructures. We find that their friction characteristics are completely different. The α-Te/β-Te system increases the incommensurate contact between layers by torsion, however, the superlubricity phenomenon cannot occur. The friction coefficient of stacking G/β-Te changes slightly under different stacking structures, but varies obviously with sliding direction, sliding speed and normal load. For the G/α-Te system, the results show that one can obtain superlubricity in a wide range of interlayer angle. Moreover, the superlubricity in G/α-Te is almost invariant with the slip direction, the slip speed and the normal load, indicating that it is a new superlubricity system with potential applications. The present study extends the superlubricity system and helps to understand the tribology properties in the two-dimensional materials.