The development of materials able to withstand exposure to demanding environments (e.g., high temperatures and pressures, ionizing radiation, corrosive chemicals, or mechanical wear) is an essential, but difficult step for designing novel technologies across several sectors. As a particular example, amorphous carbon-based (a-C) materials, also referred to as diamond-like carbon (DLC), have been used as thin films over the last three decades in a range of applications (e.g., coatings for high-performance tools, microelectromechanical systems, atomic force microscope probes, and overcoat materials for hard disk drives) because of their impressive properties, notably their high strength and strain to failure, ability to form smooth, ultra-thin, conformal coatings, as well as their outstanding tribological performance (i.e., friction coefficients as low as 0.001 in dry environments). Even though a-C materials have been used with success, some critical challenges have emerged and limit their wider use at present, especially in applications involving extreme environmental conditions, such as their limited thermal stability and strong dependence of their friction and wear response on the environmental conditions.
Our group aims to shed light on the fundamental surface chemical and physical processes controlling the tribological response of thin film materials, including DLCs, lamellar materials, and metallic coatings. To achieve this goal, our group exploit advanced surface-analytical methods, including synchrotron-based techniques, while also developing in situ methods to assess the chemistry and structure of the materials at sliding buried interfaces.
Relevant publications:
- F. Mangolini, K.D. Koshigan, M.H. Van Benthem, J.A. Ohlhausen, J.B. McClimon, J. Hilbert, J. Fontaine, R.W. Carpick, How Hydrogen and Oxygen Vapor Affect the Tribochemistry of Silicon- and Oxygen-Containing Hydrogenated Amorphous Carbon under Low-Friction Conditions: a Study Combining X-ray Absorption Spectromicroscopy and Data Science Methods, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 13 (10), 12610-12621, 2021
- F. Mangolini, J.B. McClimon, J. Segersten, J. Hilbert, P. Heaney, J.R. Lukes, R.W. Carpick, Silicon Oxide-Rich Diamond-Like Carbon: a Conformal, Ultrasmooth Thin Film Material with High Thermo-Oxidative Stability, Advanced Materials Interfaces, 6 (2), 1801416, 2019
- F. Mangolini, J. Hilbert, J.B. McClimon, J.R. Lukes, R.W. Carpick, Thermally Induced Structural Evolution of Silicon- and Oxygen-Containing Hydrogenated Amorphous Carbon: a Combined Spectroscopic and Molecular Dynamics Simulation Investigation, Langmuir, 34 (9), 2989-2985, 2018