Abstract
Designing novel lubricants with easily customized structures, devisable compositions, and simple and economic synthesis over traditional lubricants is critical to fulfilling complex applications, prolonging machine lifetime, and saving energy. Deep eutectic solvents (DESs), which show tunable composition, adjustable structure, easy fabrication, and environmental friendliness, are promising candidates for variable and complicated lubricants applications. To promote the use of DESs as lubricants, a series of PEG200-based DESs with active heteroatoms were fabricated to tailor the tribological performance via tribo-chemistry. Thereinto, PEG200/boric acid (BA) DES shows optimal lubrication performance by forming tribo-chemical reaction film composited of B2O3, iron oxides, and FeOOH, and PEG200/thiourea (TU) DES displays abrasive wear-reducing property by producing FeS tribo-chemical film. Given the excellent abrasive wear-resistance of PEG200/TU DES and friction reduction of PEG200/BA DES, ternary PEG200/BA/TU DESs, composited of PEG200/TU DES and PEG200/BA DES, are first exploited. The ternary DESs possess superior wettability and thermal stability, which render them potential lubricants. Tribological tests of the ternary DESs demonstrate that synergistic lubrication is achieved by forming a transfer film consisting of FexBy, BN, B2O3, and FeS. Wherein FexBy, BN, and B2O3 increase load bearing of the film, and FeS mitigates severe abrasive wear. The proposed design philosophy of novel DESs as lubricants opens up a unique realm that is unattainable by traditional DESs lubrication mechanisms and provides a platform to design next-generation DESs lubrication systems.
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Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52175190 and 51805455), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2682021CX117). We thank the technical support from “Ceshigo Research Service Agency for DSC analysis, www.ceshigo.com” and the Analytical and Testing Center of Southwest Jiaotong University for supporting the SEM measurements.
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Yuting LI. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University. Her research interests include the design of lubricating materials and tribological properties of novel deep eutectic solvents.
Songyu LAN. He is currently a college student at Southwest Jiaotong University. His professional orientation is materials science and engineering. His research interests cover the design and fabrication of inorganic nonmetallic material and the analysis of performance characteristics.
Yazhou LIU. He is currently a college student at Southwest Jiaotong University. His professional orientation is materials science and engineering. His research interests cover polymer materials and engineering.
Cheng CAO. He is a graduate student of materials and chemical engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University. His research area is mainly on solid self-lubricating coatings based on solid-liquid phase transition tribological mechanisms.
Zicheng TANG. He is currently a college student at Southwest Jiaotong University. His professional orientation is materials science and engineering. His research interests cover polymer materials and engineering.
Deyin DENG. He is currently a college student at Southwest Jiaotong University. His professional orientation is materials science and engineering. His research interests cover the design and fabrication of inorganic nonmetallic material and the analysis of performance characteristics.
Fuyuan LIU. He is currently a college student at Southwest Jiaotong University. His professional orientation is materials science and engineering. His research interests cover the design and fabrication of inorganic nonmetallic material and the analysis of performance characteristics.
Hao LI. He is currently an instructor at Southwest Jiaotong University. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016. He received his bachelor degree in 2011 from Lanzhou University. His research interests cover solid lubricating coatings and the related tribological properties.
Xiaoqiang FAN. He is currently an associate professor at Southwest Jiaotong University. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2016. He received his bachelor degree in 2011 from Qingdao University of Science & Technology. His research focuses on lubricating materials, corrosion protection and engineering applications. He has published over 60 papers in international journals.
Minhao ZHU. He received his bachelor degree and master degree from Southwest Jiaotong University, Sichuan, China, in 1990 and 1993, respectively. Then he worked at Southwest Jiaotong University until now. From 1996 to 2001, he received his Ph.D. degree from Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China. His current position is a professor, Ph.D. student advisor, Cheung Kong Scholars and Dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His research areas cover fretting wear, fretting fatigue, surface engineering and the design of fastener connections. He has published over 200 papers in international journals such as Carbon, Tribology International, Surface & Coatings Technology, Tribology Letters, Wear, Friction, and so on, which received more than 1,000 citations.
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Li, Y., Lan, S., Liu, Y. et al. Construction of ternary PEG200-based DESs lubrication systems via tailoring tribo-chemistry. Friction 12, 655–669 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0778-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-023-0778-y