Techniques have been developed that facilitate the measurement and imaging of the charge exchanged between metal-insulator surfaces in relative motion. In the regime where the forces of friction lead to stick-slip motion, we find that the charge transfer accompanying the slip events is proportional to the force jumps and is bunched at the stick locations. The constant of proportionality is measured in electron volts per angstrom and has a small variance over a large range of slip sizes, suggesting that in these experiments macroscopic friction originates from and scales to the intrinsic electronic interactions that form between metal and insulator surfaces.

• Received 19 January 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.85.1000