Effect of Carbon Diffusion on Friction and Wear Behaviors of Diamond-Like Carbon Coating Against Germanium in Boundary Base Oil Lubrication

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings are designed to work under severe lubrication conditions. Depending on working environment, lubrication condition, and counterpart material, DLC coatings can exhibit crucial variations in their tribological behaviors. In the search of a counterpart material to improve tribological performances of DLC coatings in desired environment, we found out in previous work that carbon diffusion is an important parameter that influences the tribological behaviors of amorphous hydrogenated (a-C:H) coating in boundary lubrication. a-C:H coating exhibits high wear against steel counterpart material that has a high carbon affinity/solubility, while its exhibits lower wear against chromium counterpart material that has lower carbon affinity/solubility than steel. These recent findings imply that consideration of the carbon affinity/solubility when choosing a counterpart material for a-C:H coating in boundary lubrication might be of significant importance to improve tribological performances of a-C:H coating. This research investigates tribological behaviors of a-C:H coating against germanium counterpart material that has extremely low carbon affinity/solubility. Results show that there is no atomic interaction between a-C:H coating and germanium during friction and wear test, followed with a very low wear of a-C:H coating.