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Research Article | Open Access

Metastable hybridized structure transformation in amorphous carbon films during friction—A study combining experiments and MD simulation

Yefei ZHOU1,2,3, Zhihao CHEN1, Tao ZHANG1, Silong ZHANG2, Xiaolei XING1,2( ), Qingxiang YANG2, Dongyang LI3( )
School of Mechanical Engineering, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science & Technology, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
Chemical and Materials Engineering Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2H5, Canada
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Abstract

Amorphous carbon films have attracted substantial interest due to their exceptional mechanical and tribological properties. Previous studies revealed that the amorphous carbon films exhibited lower coefficient of friction (COF) because of the transformation in bond structure from sp3-C to sp2-C during friction processes. However, the mechanism for such a transformation during friction is not well understood. This study is conducted to get an insight into the metastable transformation in amorphous carbon film during friction by means of experiments and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Relevant wear tests showed that wear of the film changed from an abrasive wear mode to a mixture of abrasion and adhesive wear, resulting in a decrease in growth rate of the wear rate after the running-in stage. It is worth noting that the sp3-C atoms were increased during the running-in stage when the films contained lower sp3/sp2 ratios. However, the formed sp3-C atoms could only be short-lived and gradually transformed to sp2-C atoms with the graphitization generated on the wearing surface of the films. The radial distribution function and translational order parameter indicated that the films' high sp3/sp2 ratio led to an increased sp2-C proportion on the wear scar after friction, which caused an increased structural ordering.

Keywords

amorphous carbon filmmetastable transformationstructural ordermolecular dynamics (MD) simulationtribological performance

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Friction
Volume 11 Issue 9,
September 2023
Pages 1708-1723
DOI: 10.1007/s40544-022-0690-x
Cite this article:
ZHOU Y, CHEN Z, ZHANG T, et al. Metastable hybridized structure transformation in amorphous carbon films during friction—A study combining experiments and MD simulation. Friction, 2023, 11(9): 1708-1723. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-022-0690-x

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Received: 20 May 2022
Revised: 27 July 2022
Accepted: 04 September 2022
Published: 13 March 2023
© The author(s) 2022.

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