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Hollow nanoparticles of WS2 as potential solid-state lubricants

Nature volume 387, pages 791–793 (1997)Cite this article

Abstract

Solid lubricants fill a special niche in reducing wear in situations where the use of liquid lubricants is either impractical or inadequate, such as in vacuum, space technology or automotive transport. Metal dichalcogenides MX2 (where M is, for instance, Mo or W and X is S or Se) are widely used as solid lubricants. These materials are characterized by a layered structure with weak (van der Waals) inter-layer forces that allow easy, low-strength shearing1,2. Within the past few years, hollow nanoparticles (HNs) of MX2 with structures similar to those of nested carbon fullerenes and nanotubes have been synthesized3,4. Here we show that these materials can act as effective solid lubricants: HN-WS2 outperforms the solid lubricants 2H-MoS2 and 2H-WS2 in every respect (friction, wear and lifetime of the lubricant) under varied test conditions. We attribute the outstanding performance of HN-WS2 to its chemical inertness and the hollow cage structure, which imparts elasticity and allows the particles to roll rather than to slide.

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Figure 1: Diagrams of the two experimental set-ups which were used in the present work to investigate the tribological properties of HN-WS in.
Figure 2: A series of images from the ball-flat tribometer experiment demonstrating the influence of various solid lubricants on friction and.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. J. Srolovitz for discussions. This work was supported in part by the ACS-PRF; the UK-Israel Science and Technology Research Fund; the Minerva Foundation (Munich); and the Israel Ministry of Science (Strategic Program on Nanomaterials).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. *Department of Mechanics and Control, Center for Technological Education-Holon, PO Box 305, 58102, Holon, Israel

    L. Rapoport & Yu. Bilik

  2. †Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    Y. Feldman & M. Homyonfer

  3. ‡Chemical Services Unit, Weizmann Institute, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    S. R. Cohen

  4. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.T.,

    R. Tenne

Authors
  1. L. Rapoport
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  2. Yu. Bilik
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  4. M. Homyonfer
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  5. S. R. Cohen
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  6. R. Tenne
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to R. Tenne.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary material for the article (DOC 12 kb)

Supplementary Image 1

Wear track left on the steel-block in experiment a of Table 1. (JPG 146 kb)

Supplementary Image 2

Wear track left on the steel-block in the disc-block experiment. (JPG 182 kb)

Supplementary Image 3

Wear track left on LiF crystal in the reciprocating ball on flat tribometer experiment. (JPG 93 kb)

Supplementary Image 4

Topography and frictional map obtained with SFM. (JPG 41 kb)

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Rapoport, L., Bilik, Y., Feldman, Y. et al. Hollow nanoparticles of WS2 as potential solid-state lubricants. Nature 387, 791–793 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/42910

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