AVS 47th International Symposium
    Thin Films Tuesday Sessions
       Session TF-TuA

Paper TF-TuA10
Lubricating Characteristics of Zinc Oxide: Effect of Carbon, Silicon and Boron as Additives

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 5:00 pm, Room 203

Session: Mechanical Properties of Thin Films
Presenter: J.J. Nainaparampil, Systran Federal/Air Force Research Lab
Authors: J.J. Nainaparampil, Systran Federal/Air Force Research Lab
J.S. Zabinski, Air Force Research Lab
Correspondent: Click to Email
Zinc Oxide, with its wurzite structure, is a unique material that exhibits lubricious qualities and desirable electronic and optical characteristics. There have been numerous studies on the doped zinc oxide thin films profiling it as an optical coating material or as a semiconductor material. But no significant amount of work has been reported yet on this material as a tribological material. Recent work of this lab revealed some of the tribological potentials of this material. Due to its open nature and desirable coordination number, zinc can move around different lattice positions and be substituted with external atoms to become interstitials. Zinc oxide shares the hexagonal structure, which is commonly seen in most of the widely used solid lubricants. The open nature of its crystal structure and similarity of this structure with that of the widely used solid lubricants are quite desirable qualities. To preserve these qualities, and to manipulate the tribological characteristics, additives of ionic radii comparable that of Zn need to be selected. Alumina doped zinc oxide have already been studied and found to have low friction and good wear characteristics. In this work, properties of thin films of zinc oxide, formed with simultaneous addition of Si, C and B will be reported. Si added films showed low friction and long wear life above 350 ºC. Deposition direction and oxygen working pressure also had a profound effect on these films. Results of common surface analyzing techniques like XPS, SEM, AFM, and XRD, Raman, Nanoindentation and Friction and Wear will be reported.