Environmental conditions to achieve low adhesion and low friction on diamond surfaces

The adhesion and friction of both diamond and diamond-like carbon coatings can be dramatically changed by active gases in the environment, such as hydrogen, water vapor and humid air, due to tribochemical reactions. To understand the atmospheric effects and to predict the optimized environmental conditions (gas species, pressure and temperature), the tribochemical reactions on diamond surfaces are modeled from first principles thermodynamics. The results show that both H₂ and a mixture of H₂O plus O ₂ (such as humid air) can effectively achieve low adhesion and low friction with a fully -H or -OH passivated surface at very low partial pressures. Water vapor itself can passivate diamond (1 1 1) and (1 0 0) surfaces into half -H and half -OH terminated surfaces, but only at unrealistically high partial pressures. Even a trace amount of oxygen combined with water vapor can significantly reduce the water partial pressure for passivation. In all tribochemical reactions considered, the partial pressure required to reach low adhesion and low friction increases rapidly with temperature, and diamond (1 0 0) surface requires less partial pressures than (1 1 1) surface for surface passivation. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.