On the wear mechanism of thin nickel film during AFM-based scratching process using molecular dynamics

We report a study on monocrystalline nickel thin films using the atomic force microscope (AFM) based scratching process to understand the associated wear mechanism. As for the nano level fabrication, better understanding of abrasive wear mechanism is a prerequisite. A three-dimensional molecular dynamics (MD) study has been performed and we have used a new parameter wear volume to distinguish between different wear zones. A reduced number of zones have been proposed to understand the wear mechanism during nanoscratching process. Also, centrosymmetry parameter has been used to validate the findings.