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Ultralow nanoscale wear through atom-by-atom attrition in silicon-containing diamond-like carbon

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 181–185 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Understanding friction1,2,3,4 and wear5,6,7,8,9,10,11 at the nanoscale is important for many applications that involve nanoscale components sliding on a surface, such as nanolithography, nanometrology and nanomanufacturing. Defects, cracks and other phenomena that influence material strength and wear at macroscopic scales are less important at the nanoscale, which is why nanowires can, for example, show higher strengths than bulk samples12. The contact area between the materials must also be described differently at the nanoscale13. Diamond-like carbon is routinely used as a surface coating in applications that require low friction and wear because it is resistant to wear at the macroscale14,15,16,17,18,19,20, but there has been considerable debate about the wear mechanisms of diamond-like carbon at the nanoscale because it is difficult to fabricate diamond-like carbon structures with nanoscale fidelity. Here, we demonstrate the batch fabrication of ultrasharp diamond-like carbon tips that contain significant amounts of silicon on silicon microcantilevers for use in atomic force microscopy. This material is known to possess low friction in humid conditions, and we find that, at the nanoscale, it is three orders of magnitude more wear-resistant than silicon under ambient conditions. A wear rate of one atom per micrometre of sliding on SiO2 is demonstrated. We find that the classical wear law of Archard21 does not hold at the nanoscale; instead, atom-by-atom attrition7,8 dominates the wear mechanisms at these length scales. We estimate that the effective energy barrier for the removal of a single atom is ∼1 eV, with an effective activation volume of ∼1 × 10−28 m3.

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Figure 1: Ultrasharp Si-DLC tips.
Figure 2: Wear in Si-DLC tips sliding on SiO2.
Figure 3: Rate of wear as a function of sliding distance for tip A.

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Acknowledgements

H.B. and A.S. acknowledge the experimental support of W. Haeberle, M. Pede and P. Baechtold. The authors thank C. Bolliger for proofreading the manuscript. H.B. acknowledges partial support from the European Commission through grant no. FP6-2005-IST-5-34719 for the project ProTeM. R.W.C. acknowledges partial support provided for this research by the Nano/Bio Interface Center through the National Science Foundation NSEC DMR-0425780.

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Author notes

  1. Harish Bhaskaran, Papot Jaroenapibal & Yun Chen

    Present address: Present address: Yale University, Department of Electrical Engineering, 15 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, USA (H.B.); Khon Kaen University, Industrial Engineering Department, Muang Khone Kean, Thailand 40002 (P.J.); Department of Chemistry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506, USA (Y.C.),

Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Research - Zurich, Rüschlikon, 8803, Switzerland

    Harish Bhaskaran, Bernd Gotsmann, Abu Sebastian, Ute Drechsler, Mark A. Lantz & Michel Despont

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, 220 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Papot Jaroenapibal & Robert W. Carpick

  3. Department of Engineering Physics, University of Wisconsin, 1500 Engineering Drive Madison, Wisconsin, 53706, USA

    Yun Chen & Kumar Sridharan

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Contributions

H.B. wrote this manuscript with inputs from all authors. H.B. and B.G. analysed the data, with participation of M.A.L. H.B., U.D. and M.D. participated in the fabrication of the cantilevers. Y.C. and K.S. optimized the plasma process parameters for deposition and performed the deposition. P.J. performed the TEM imaging of the tips and with R.W.C. interpreted the results of TEM. H.B., B.G., A.S., R.W.C. and M.A.L. designed the wear experiment. H.B. and A.S. performed the experiments and collected the data. H.B., B.G., M.A.L. and R.W.C. analysed and interpreted the results.

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Correspondence to Harish Bhaskaran or Michel Despont.

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Bhaskaran, H., Gotsmann, B., Sebastian, A. et al. Ultralow nanoscale wear through atom-by-atom attrition in silicon-containing diamond-like carbon. Nature Nanotech 5, 181–185 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.3

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