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Hydrothermal Synthesis of Monodisperse Hard Carbon Spheres and Their Water-Based Lubrication

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Abstract

Monodisperse hard carbon spheres (HCSs) with different size from 300 nm to 1 μm were hydrothermally synthesized and characterized. The tribological performance of green water-based HCSs lubricant systems were studied between glass lens and silicon wafer at various normal loads and concentration on a universal micro-tribotester. The coefficient of friction (COF) increased with the particle size and an average COF of about 0.03 was measured when lubricated by 300 nm HCSs suspensions, whereas for 1-μm-sized carbon sphere, the average COF was 0.059 for the particle concentration of 1 mg/ml. For a given size of particles, the COF first decreases with increasing concentration, but the trend reverses after a critical concentration as adding more particles in the confined space block their movement causing higher COF. The wear life of the 1 μm HCSs lubricant was also evaluated at constant load of 2 N for the total shearing length of 8 m. A very low COF of 0.01 was stably achieved for the lubricant with 4 mg/ml HCSs suspension.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grand No. 51675236), Training Program of the Major Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grand No. 91648109), the Tribology Science Fund of State Key Laboratory of Tribology (SKLTKF14A01) and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (2016M600366).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Micro/Nano Science and Technology, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, China

    Guanggui Cheng, Lingjian Dong, Xiaodong Wang, Zhongqiang Zhang, Liqiang Guo & Jianning Ding

  2. Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, China

    Guanggui Cheng, Xiaodong Wang, Zhongqiang Zhang, Liqiang Guo & Jianning Ding

  3. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Lakhinder Kamboj, Tushar Khosla & Noshir Pesika

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  1. Guanggui Cheng
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  2. Lingjian Dong
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  3. Lakhinder Kamboj
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  5. Xiaodong Wang
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  9. Jianning Ding
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Correspondence to Guanggui Cheng, Noshir Pesika or Jianning Ding.

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Cheng, G., Dong, L., Kamboj, L. et al. Hydrothermal Synthesis of Monodisperse Hard Carbon Spheres and Their Water-Based Lubrication. Tribol Lett 65, 141 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-017-0923-8

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