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UItra-low friction and edge-pinning effect in large-lattice-mismatch van der Waals heterostructures

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 47–53 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two-dimensional heterostructures are excellent platforms to realize twist-angle-independent ultra-low friction due to their weak interlayer van der Waals interactions and natural lattice mismatch. However, for finite-size interfaces, the effect of domain edges on the friction process remains unclear. Here we report the superlubricity phenomenon and the edge-pinning effect at MoS2/graphite and MoS2/hexagonal boron nitride van der Waals heterostructure interfaces. We found that the friction coefficients of these heterostructures are below 10−6. Molecular dynamics simulations corroborate the experiments, which highlights the contribution of edges and interface steps to friction forces. Our experiments and simulations provide more information on the sliding mechanism of finite low-dimensional structures, which is vital to understand the friction process of laminar solid lubricants.

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Fig. 1: Friction characterizations of 2D heterostructures.
Fig. 2: Superlubricity of MoS2/graphite and MoS2/h-BN heterostructure interfaces.
Fig. 3: Source of friction for three different heterostructure interfaces.
Fig. 4: MD simulation results of MoS2 flakes sliding on graphite.
Fig. 5: Effects of interface steps on friction force.

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Data availability

The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary information files. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to B. J. Irving for carefully reading the manuscript. G.Z. thanks the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC, grant nos 11834017 and 61888102) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS (grant no. XDB30000000) for their support. M.L. thanks the ESI Fund and the OPR DE International Mobility of Researchers MSCA-IF III at CTU in Prague (no. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/20_079/0017983) for their support. L.D. gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Academy of Finland (grant no. 3333099). D.S. thanks the support from NSFC (grant no. 61734001). K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the MEXT, Japan, A3 Foresight by JSPS and the CREST (JPMJCR15F3), JST. M.L., P.N. and T.P. acknowledge support from the project Novel Nanostructures for Engineering Applications CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_026/0008396. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic through the e-INFRA CZ (ID:90140). T.P., V.E.P.C. and A.S. acknowledge support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 721642: SOLUTION. The data and materials are available from the corresponding authors upon request. The authors acknowledge the use of the IRIDIS High Performance Computing Facility, and associated support services at the University of Southampton, in the completion of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Mengzhou Liao, Luojun Du, Jiahao Yuan, Shuopei Wang, Hua Yu, Jian Tang, Lin Gu, Rong Yang, Dongxia Shi & Guangyu Zhang

  2. Department of Control Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Mengzhou Liao, Paolo Nicolini, Victor E. P. Claerbout & Tomas Polcar

  3. Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, Aalto University, Tietotie, Finland

    Luojun Du

  4. School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jiahao Yuan, Hua Yu, Jian Tang, Lin Gu, Dongxia Shi & Guangyu Zhang

  5. Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, China

    Shuopei Wang, Rong Yang, Dongxia Shi & Guangyu Zhang

  6. Oxford Instruments (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Shanghai, China

    Peng Cheng

  7. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe & Takashi Taniguchi

  8. National Centre for Advanced Tribology (nCATS), Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Andrea Silva, Denis Kramer & Tomas Polcar

  9. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany

    Denis Kramer

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  1. Mengzhou Liao
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Contributions

G.Z. supervised the research. M.L. performed the AFM measurements and data analysis. L.D., J.Y., S.W. and H.Y. performed the sample growth, TEM and spectroscopic characterizations. J.T. and L.G. performed TEM measurements. P.C. assisted with the AFM cantilever calibration methods. K.W. and T.T. offered BN flakes. P.N., V.E.P.C. and A.S. performed the simulations. M.L. and P.N. wrote the manuscript. T.P. and D.K. revised the manuscript. R.Y. and D.S. helped in the lab management. All the authors commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guangyu Zhang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Materials thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–10 and Figs. 1–13.

Supplementary Video 1

Video of a MoS2 flake across the graphite step.

Supplementary Video 2

A simulation video of a MoS2 flake across the graphite step.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Raw data for Fig. 1h–i.

Source Data Fig. 2

Raw data for Fig. 2a–c.

Source Data Fig. 3

Raw data for Fig. 3a–f.

Source Data Fig. 4

Raw data for Fig. 4c–f.

Source Data Fig. 5

Raw data for Fig. 5a,c.

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Liao, M., Nicolini, P., Du, L. et al. UItra-low friction and edge-pinning effect in large-lattice-mismatch van der Waals heterostructures. Nat. Mater. 21, 47–53 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01058-4

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