Application of two dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova model to nanotribology

TL;DR

This paper develops a 2D Frenkel-Kontorova model to study nanotribology, revealing how material properties and layer alignment influence static friction and suggesting conditions for superlubricity.

Contribution

It introduces a two-dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova model to analyze nanotribology, highlighting differences from 1D models and exploring factors affecting static friction and superlubricity.

Findings

Static friction is higher between identical materials.

Uncommensurate layers exhibit larger average static friction in 2D.

Superlubricity is a potential outcome under certain conditions.

Abstract

A two-dimensional Frenkel-Kontorova model is set up. Its application to the tribology is considered. The materials and the commensurability between two layers strongly affect the static friction force. It is found that the static friction force is larger between two layer of same materials than that for different materials. For two-dimensional case the averaged static friction force is larger for the uncommensurate case than that for the commensurate case, which is completely different from one-dimensional case. The directions of the propagation of the center of mass and the external driving force are usually different except at some special symmetric directions. The possibility to obtain superlubricity is suggested.