Lubrication: Articular Cartilage‐Inspired Surface Functionalization for Enhanced Lubrication (Adv. Mater. Interfaces 12/2019)

A charged polymer brush grafted surface, inspired by natural articular cartilage, achieves an excellent lubricating performance with a low coefficient of friction due to the mechanism of hydration lubrication. The surface charged brush forms a hydration shell which can undergo large normal load without deformation. Additionally, the rapid exchange with the water molecules nearby results in a fluidlike manner of the hydrated shells when being sheared and correspondingly the significantly reduced friction force at the sliding interface. More details can be found in article number 1900180 by Yixin Wang, Yulong Sun, Yanhong Gu, and Hongyu Zhang.