Towards direct superlubricity and negligible wear with polyalcohol lubricant mixtures of ethylene glycol and glycerol for steel tribopairs

Friction and wear remain as the main concerns in the mechanical mobility systems due to the significant energy consumption and the main mode of component failures, and achieving direct superlubricity has attracted enormous attention by fundamentally minimizing friction and wear. In this work, we have prepared polyalcohol lubricant mixtures of ethylene glycol and glycerol to precisely enhance the in-situ formation of passivation film on the friction surfaces, and remarkable direct superlubricity of 0.0057 combined with negligible wear has been successfully achieved at ethylene glycol/glycerol weight ratio of 0.6 for steel tribopairs. Lubrication state analysis indicates that the achieved superlubricity state is in the boundary lubrication regime, and further adsorption analysis indicates that there is a strong interaction between lubricant molecules and friction surfaces via the hydroxyl groups. A sliding simulation of polyalcohol lubricant mixtures of ethylene glycol and glycerol indicates that ethylene glycol could be induced to accumulate near the friction surfaces to form easy-to-shear layers. Furthermore, both the experimental analysis and the molecular dynamics simulation demonstrate that a tribochemical reaction could be induced for the lubricant molecules at the interface, with water molecules formed to further strengthen the formation of easy-to-shear layers and oligomers formed to more effectively passivate the asperity contacts. This work provides a new strategy to direct liquid superlubricity and could advance the application of liquid superlubricity in the industry field.