. 24/7 Space News .
CARBON WORLDS
Graphene-like 2D material leverages quantum effects for ultra-low friction
by Staff Writers
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Nov 19, 2021

This schematic shows the lattice structure of magnetene, with the dark red spheres depicting iron and the lighter red ones depicting oxygen.

A team of researchers from University of Toronto Engineering and Rice University have reported the first measurements of the ultra-low-friction behaviour of a material known as magnetene. The results point the way toward strategies for designing similar low-friction materials for use in a variety of fields, including tiny, implantable devices.

Magnetene is a 2D material, meaning it is composed of a single layer of atoms. In this respect, it is similar to graphene, a material that has been studied intensively for its unusual properties - including ultra-low friction - since its discovery in 2004.

"Most 2D materials are formed as flat sheets," says PhD candidate Peter Serles, who is the lead author of the new paper published in Science Advances.

"The theory was that these sheets of graphene exhibit low friction behaviour because they are only very weakly bonded, and slide past each other really easily. You can imagine it like fanning out a deck of playing cards: it doesn't take much effort to spread the deck out because the friction between the cards is really low."

The team, which includes Professors Tobin Filleter and Chandra Veer Singh, Post-Doc Shwetank Yadav, and several current and graduated students from their lab groups, wanted to test this theory by comparing graphene to other 2D materials.

While graphene is made of carbon, magnetene is made from magnetite, a form of iron oxide, which normally exists as a 3D lattice. The team's collaborators at Rice University treated 3D magnetite using high-frequency sound waves to carefully separate a layer consisting of only a few sheets of 2D magnetene.

The University of Toronto Engineering team then put the magnetene sheets into an atomic force microscope. In this device, a sharp-tipped probe is dragged over the top of the magnetene sheet to measure the friction. The process is comparable to how the stylus of a record player gets dragged across the surface of a vinyl record.

"The bonds between the layers of magnetene are a lot stronger than they would be between a stack of graphene sheets," says Serles. "They don't slide past each other. What surprised us was the friction between the tip of the probe and the uppermost slice of magnetene: it was just as low as it is in graphene."

Until now, scientists had attributed the low friction of graphene and other 2D materials to the theory that the sheets can slide because they are only bonded by weak forces known as Van der Waals forces. But the low-friction behaviour of magnetene, which doesn't exhibit these forces due to its structure, suggests that something else is going on.

"When you go from a 3D material to a 2D material, a lot of unusual things start to happen due to the effects of quantum physics," says Serles. "Depending on what angle you cut the slice, it can be very smooth or very rough. The atoms are no longer as restricted in that third dimension, so they can vibrate in different ways. And the electron structure changes too. We found that all of these together affect the friction."

The team confirmed the role of these quantum phenomena by comparing their experimental results to those predicted by computer simulations. Yadav and Singh constructed mathematical models based on Density Functional Theory to simulate the behaviour of the probe tip sliding over the 2D material. The models that incorporated the quantum effects were the best predictors of the experimental observations.

Serles says that the practical upshot of the team's findings is that they offer new information for scientists and engineers who wish to intentionally design ultra-low-friction materials. Such substances might be useful as lubricants in various small-scale applications, including implantable devices.

For example, one could imagine a tiny pump that delivers a controlled amount of a given drug to a certain part of the body. Other kinds of micro-electro-mechanical systems could harvest the energy of a beating heart to power a sensor, or power a tiny robotic manipulator capable of sorting one type of cell from another in a petri dish.

"When you're dealing with such tiny moving parts, the ratio of surface area to mass is really high," says Filleter, corresponding author on the new study. "That means things are much more likely to get stuck. What we've shown in this work is that it's precisely because of their tiny scale that these 2D materials have such low friction. These quantum effects wouldn't apply to larger, 3D materials."

Serles says that these scale-dependent effects, combined with the fact that iron oxide is non-toxic and inexpensive, makes magnetene very attractive for use in implantable mechanical devices. But he adds that there is more work to be done before the quantum behaviours are fully understood.

"We have tried this with other types of iron-based 2D materials, such as hematene or chromiteen, and we don't see the same quantum signatures or low friction behaviour," he says. "So we need to zero in on why these quantum effects are happening, which could help us be more intentional about the design of new kinds of low-friction materials."

Research Report: Friction of magnetene, a non-van der Waals 2D material


Related Links
University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
Carbon Worlds - where graphite, diamond, amorphous, fullerenes meet


Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly


paypal only
SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once


credit card or paypal


CARBON WORLDS
Meadow biomass contributes to understanding the potential of carbon sequestration
Kazan, Russia (SPX) Nov 18, 2021
Assessing the functional structure of plant communities and their productivity helps to determine the contribution of biological diversity and primary productivity to ecosystem services, the most significant of which are provisioning and regulating services. The former determine the amount of biomass produced in the future available for use as biological resources by humans, the latter - the formation of the habitat of natural and anthropogenically modified ecosystems. The assessment and reliable ... read more

Comment using your Disqus, Facebook, Google or Twitter login.



Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle

CARBON WORLDS
Crew operations aboard Space Station return to normal

Moonshot: Japan recruits first new astronauts in 13 years

First all-private space station mission to include two dozen experiments

NASA receives 11th consecutive clean financial audit opinion

CARBON WORLDS
Latest Vega launch paves way for Vega-C

Pangea Aerospace hot fire tests the first MethaLox aerospike engine in the world

PLD Space exhibits the first privately-developed Spanish rocket

Arianespace to launch Australian satellite Optus-11 with Ariane 6

CARBON WORLDS
NASA's Perseverance captures challenging flight by Mars Helicopter

Curiosity continues to dine on Zechstein drill fines

Twin of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover begins terrain tests

Life on Mars search could be misled by false fossils

CARBON WORLDS
Chinese astronauts' EVAs to help extend mechanical arm

Astronaut becomes first Chinese woman to spacewalk

Shenzhou XIII crew ready for first spacewalk

Chinese astronauts arrive at space station for longest mission

CARBON WORLDS
Bezos' Blue Origin hires lobbyist after 'Space Tax' proposed

Groundbreaking Iridium Certus 100 Service Launches with Partner Products for Land, Sea, Air and Industrial IoT

European software-defined satellite starts service

iRocket And Turion Space ink agreement for 10 launches to low earth orbit

CARBON WORLDS
Bacteria may be key to sustainably extracting earth elements for tech

UVA researchers advance bioprinting

New holographic camera sees the unseen with high precision

Researchers recreate deep-Earth conditions to see how iron copes with extreme stress

CARBON WORLDS
The worlds next door: Looking for habitable planets around Alpha Centauri

Alien organisms - hitchhikers of the galaxy

Discovering exoplanets using artificial intelligence

New model will help find Earth-like Exoplanets

CARBON WORLDS
Science results offer first 3D view of Jupiter's atmosphere

Juno peers deep into Jupiter's colorful belts and zones

Scientists find strange black 'superionic ice' that could exist inside other planets

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is deeper than thought, shaped like lens









The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2024 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. All articles labeled "by Staff Writers" include reports supplied to Space Media Network by industry news wires, PR agencies, corporate press officers and the like. Such articles are individually curated and edited by Space Media Network staff on the basis of the report's information value to our industry and professional readership. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Statement Our advertisers use various cookies and the like to deliver the best ad banner available at one time. All network advertising suppliers have GDPR policies (Legitimate Interest) that conform with EU regulations for data collection. By using our websites you consent to cookie based advertising. If you do not agree with this then you must stop using the websites from May 25, 2018. Privacy Statement. Additional information can be found here at About Us.