Chemical origins of frictional aging

Although the basic laws of friction are simple enough to be taught in elementary physics classes and although friction has been widely studied for centuries, in the current state of knowledge it is still not possible to predict a friction force from fundamental principles. One of the highly debated topics in this field is the origin of static friction. For most macroscopic contacts between two solids, static friction will increase logarithmically with time, a phenomenon that is referred to as aging of the interface. One known reason for the logarithmic growth of static friction is the deformation creep in plastic contacts. However, this mechanism cannot explain frictional aging observed in the absence of roughness and plasticity. Here, we discover molecular mechanisms that can lead to a logarithmic increase of friction based purely on interfacial chemistry. Predictions of our model are consistent with published experimental data on the friction of silica.