QUARTZ-CRYSTAL MICROBALANCE STUDIES OF DISORDER-INDUCED LUBRICATION

We report here a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) study of the fricti on associated with sliding of solid and liquid krypton films on ordere d and disordered gold substrates, where lower friction is observed for the disordered substrates. The gold substrates on which the measureme nts were performed were prepared by depositing gold films onto polishe d quartz substrates held at 80 and 300 K, the 80 K samples being the m ore disordered of the two. The fact that lower friction levels were ob served for more disordered systems may, potentially, be explained by t he inhibition of phonon excitations in these systems.