Tribology on the Small Scale

Friction, lubrication, adhesion, and wear are prevalent physical phenomena in everyday life and in many key technologies. This book incorporates a bottom-up approach to friction, lubrication, and wear. This is done by focusing on how these tribological phenomena occur on the small scale — the atomic to the micrometer scale — a field often called nanotribology. The book covers the microscopic origins of the common tribological concepts of roughness, elasticity, plasticity, friction coefficients, and wear coefficients. Some macroscale concepts (like elasticity) scale down well to the micro- and atomic-scale, while other macroscale concepts (like hydrodynamic lubrication) do not. In addition, this book also has chapters on topics not typically found in tribology texts: surface energy, surface forces, lubrication in confined spaces, and the atomistic origins of friction. These chapters cover tribological concepts that have become increasingly important at the small scale: capillary condensation, disjoining pressure, contact electrification, molecular slippage at interfaces, and atomic scale stick-slip. Numerous examples are provided throughout the book on how a nanoscale understanding of tribological phenomena is essential to the proper engineering of important new technologies such as MEMS, disk drives, and nanoimprinting.