Superlubricity, a state where friction between two contact surfaces is nearly zero, has a great potential to revolutionize various mechanical systems by significantly reducing energy dissipation and enhancing efficiency. It can be realized either by structural incommensurate contact between crystalline surfaces or by creating highly passive interfaces to cancel out the adhesive forces. However, fabricating and maintaining such superlubric surfaces still present challenges, often disabled by surface structural defects or susceptibility to humid atmospheres, which renders superlubricity fragile. Here, we propose a novel strategy of photoelectron superlubricity (PESL), where robust superlubricity can be achieved in humid atmospheres by in-situ laser-irradiating the contact interface of an amorphous carbon film sliding against sapphire ball. We demonstrate that PESL not only exhibits a high resistance to environmental disturbances but also features rapid response. The formation of PESL originates from the laser-irradiating induced formation of nanographene-layered interface and enrichment of photoelectrons at the interface, resulting in a repulsive electric field between the nanographene layers. The discovery of PESL opens a new avenue for achieving superlubricity, and also provides novel insights for smart friction, mechanical motion control and light manipulation.
Quantifying superlubricity of bilayer graphene from the mobility of interface dislocations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Material Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校材料研究实验室）
Robust structural superlubricity of twisted graphene bilayer and domain walls between commensurate moiré pattern domains from first-principles calculations
Institute of Spectroscopy of Russian Academy of Sciences（俄罗斯科学院光谱研究所）；Kintech Lab Ltd.（Kintech实验室有限公司）；National Research Centre ``Kurchatov Institute''（库尔恰托夫国家研究中心）；Physics Department, Belarusian State University（白俄罗斯国立大学物理系）
Compositional Complexity-Induced Ultralow Friction in Medium-Entropy MXenes
Texas A&M University（德克萨斯农工大学）；Missouri University of Science and Technology（密苏里科技大学）；National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)（国家能源技术实验室）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Purdue University（普渡大学）
