A brief review on the wear mechanisms and interfaces of carbon based materials

The demand for reducing wear and friction has become the chief aim in the automotive industry nowadays. The usage of lubricant is not considered enough as there is still room for improvements. As a solution, much research has arisen towards what we called self-lubricating ideas, in order to reduce friction better than lubricant. This paper presents an overview wear mechanism and the interface of carbon-based materials. This paper will also discuss the interfaces by carbon as substrate and coating layer. The findings show that for metals, the predominant wear mechanisms were abrasion and fatigue. Meanwhile, for polymers and coating (DLC), they were abrasive along with adhesive wear. The surface roughness of the substrate plays a crucial role in increasing the excellent performance of the DLC coating. The interfaces of carbon elements definitely give huge impact on both self-lubricant materials and coatings where the coefficient of friction and wear rate changes drastically even with 1 wt.% addition. Nevertheless, a clear understanding of the factors that affect the tribological performance is very essential in performance improvement for potential applications.