Combined Effect of Microstructure, Surface Energy, and Adhesion Force on the Friction of PVA/Ferrite Spinel Nanocomposites

Moustafa A Darwish; Tatiana I Zubar; Oleg D Kanafyev; Di Zhou; Ekaterina L Trukhanova; Sergei V Trukhanov; Alex V Trukhanov; Ahmed Maher Henaish

doi:10.3390/nano12121998

Combined Effect of Microstructure, Surface Energy, and Adhesion Force on the Friction of PVA/Ferrite Spinel Nanocomposites

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Jun 10;12(12):1998. doi: 10.3390/nano12121998.

Authors

Moustafa A Darwish¹, Tatiana I Zubar^{2

3}, Oleg D Kanafyev², Di Zhou⁴, Ekaterina L Trukhanova², Sergei V Trukhanov², Alex V Trukhanov^{2

3

5}, Ahmed Maher Henaish^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt.
² Laboratory of Magnetic Films Physics, SSPA "Scientific and Practical Materials Research Centre of NAS of Belarus", 19, P. Brovki Str., 220072 Minsk, Belarus.
³ Laboratory of Single Crystal Growth, South Ural State University, 76, Lenin Av., 454080 Chelyabinsk, Russia.
⁴ Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education & International Center for Dielectric Research, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
⁵ Department of Electronic Materials Technology, National University of Science and Technology MISiS, 119049 Moscow, Russia.
⁶ NANOTECH Center, Ural Federal University, 620002 Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Abstract

Nanocomposite films based on spinel ferrite (Mg_0.8Zn_0.2Fe_1.5Al_0.5O₄) in a PVA matrix were obtained. An increase in the spinel concentration to 10 wt.% caused an avalanche-like rise in roughness due to the formation of nanoparticle agglomerates. The lateral mode of atomic force microscopy (AFM) allowed us to trace the agglomeration dynamics. An unexpected result was that the composite with 6 wt.% of filler had a low friction coefficient in comparison with similar composites due to the successfully combined effects of low roughness and surface energy. The friction coefficient decreased to 0.07 when the friction coefficient of pure PVA was 0.72. A specially developed method for measuring nano-objects' surface energy using AFM made it possible to explain the anomalous nature of the change in tribological characteristics.

Keywords: ferrites; friction; nanocomposites; spinel nanoparticles; surface energy.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.