11
September 2003
Materials: Brush up your lubricants
Charged polymers are ubiquitous in biological systems, such as mammalian joints, but can also play an important role in various technological applications. Lubricants of this type are particularly relevant to living systems, for instance for the eyelids sliding past the cornea, or cartilage surfaces in mammalian joints. A new approach to designing a charged polymer lubricant has resulted in a promising material that might also illustrate why biolubrication is so efficient. By attaching layers of charged polymers (polyelectrolytes) "end-on" to rubbing mica surfaces in an aqueous medium, so that they form a microscopic brush-like layer, lubrication is significantly improved in comparison with other polymeric surfactants. Better than either neutral brushes or charged absorbed polymers, both of which are regarded as very efficient lubricants.
Lubrication by charged polymers
URI RAVIV, SUZANNE GIASSON, NIR KAMPF, JEAN-FRANÇOIS
GOHY, ROBERT JÉRÔME & JACOB KLEIN
Nature 425, 163–165 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01970
| First
Paragraph | Full
Text (HTML / PDF) |
