Onset of frictional slip by domain nucleation in adsorbed monolayers

It has been known for centuries that a body in contact with a substrate will start to slide when the lateral force exceeds the static friction force. Yet the microscopic mechanisms ruling the crossover from static to dynamic friction are still the object of active research. Here, we analyze the onset of slip of a xenon (Xe) monolayer sliding on a copper (Cu) substrate. We consider thermal-activated creep under a small external lateral force, and observe that slip proceeds by the nucleation and growth of domains in the commensurate interface between the film and the substrate. We measure the activation energy for the nucleation process considering its dependence on the external force, the substrate corrugation, and particle interactions in the film. To understand the results, we use the classical theory of nucleation and compute analytically the activation energy which turns out to be in excellent agreement with numerical results. We discuss the relevance of our results to understand experiments on the sliding of adsorbed monolayers.