Universal Aging Mechanism for Static and Sliding Friction of Metallic Nanoparticles

The term "contact aging" refers to the temporal evolution of the interface between a slider and a substrate usually resulting in increasing friction with time. Current phenomenological models for multiasperity contacts anticipate that such aging is not only the driving force behind the transition from static to sliding friction, but at the same time influences the general dynamics of the sliding friction process. To correlate static and sliding friction on the nanoscale, we show experimental evidence of stick-slip friction for nanoparticles sliding on graphite over a wide dynamic range. We can assign defined periods of aging to the stick phases of the particles, which agree with simulations explicitly including contact aging. Additional slide-hold-slide experiments for the same system allow linking the sliding friction results to static friction measurements, where both friction mechanisms can be universally described by a common aging formalism.