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Updated: Mar 24, 2026

Residue-Free Fabrication of van der Waals Heterostructures of Two-Dimensional Materials
Published on: July 18, 2025
Collective superlubricity of graphene flakes
Merel M van Wijk1, Astrid S de Wijn2, Annalisa Fasolino1
1Radboud University, Institute for Molecules and Materials, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
We investigate solid lubrication of graphene and graphene flakes using atomistic molecular-dynamics simulations. We find that graphene flakes yield lower friction than graphene as a result of a collective mechanism that emerges from the independent behaviour of the flakes. By freezing out different degrees of freedom of the flakes, we are able to attribute the low friction to non-simultaneous slipping of the individual flakes. We also compare the results of the atomistic simulations to those of a simplified two-dimensional model and find that the behaviour of the latter is strongly dependent on parameters, which emerge naturally from the atomistic simulations.
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