Abstract
The friction between Al2O3 nanowires and silicon substrates of different surface textures was characterised by use of optical manipulation. It was found that surface textures had significant effect on both the friction and the effective contact area between a nanowire and a substrate. A genetic algorithm was developed to determine the effective contact area between the nanowire and the textured substrate. The frictional force was found to be nearly proportional to the effective contact area, regardless of width, depth, spacing and orientation of the surface textures. Interlocking caused by textured grooves was not observed in this study.
Highlights
The nanoscale contact between two objects may generate extremely strong adhesion and significantly great friction, which would considerably hinder the mobility of the objects[1,2,3]
Previous studies showed that the frictional shear stress at NW/substrate interfaces varied from several to several tens of mega-pascals[32,34,35,37,40,41,42], which was influenced by the NW and substrate materials[41,42,43]
Where f is the kinetic friction per unit length, L is the length of the NW measured from one end to the centre point, h is the distance from the centre of NW to the line connecting the two ends of the NW measured from the optical image
Summary
The as-received Al2O3 NWs have a rectangular cross-section and atomically smooth surface[44]. The high-magnification image in Fig. 1e and the profile in Fig. 1f shows that the grooves have a cross-sectional profile of 50 nm in depth. The dimensions and sizes of the NWs and substrates surface textures were examined by AFM (Asylum Research MFP-3D) and confocal scanning microscopy (Lext OLS4100)
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