Deformation of the contact area and adhesive friction between a scanning frictional microscope probe and the atomic-flat surface

The determination of the equilibrium atomic structure of a nanotribocontact, formed by a hard probe to be viewed as a paraboloid of revolution and subjected to an external load, with the soft surface modeled by a set of parallel atomic planes is considered. Structural, energy, and load characteristics are calculated. In addition, dissipative static adhesive friction as a function of the normal load and the radius of probe curvature for the diamond-graphite system is derived. A number of approximations of the interatomic potentials is used. It is shown that an allowance for the deformation of the contact area causes the adhesive frictional force in the tensile (negative) load range to decrease. For positive loads in a range of 0–80 nN, the variation of the frictional force (when deformation is taken into account) depends on the radius of the probe curvature and the used approximation of the interaction potential. The dependence of friction on the radius of the probe curvature is close to a direct proportionality. The calculated results are compared with the available experimental data.