Study on atmospheric tribology performance of MoS2–W films with self-adaption to temperature

Abstract MoS2 is easily oxidized into MoO3 at elevated temperature, which leads to a sharp deterioration of lubricity and greatly limits the application. To improve the atmospheric tribology properties of MoS2 at elevated temperature, the co-deposited MoS2–W composite films are prepared by magnetron sputtering. Compared with pure MoS2, the design of three kinds of MoS2–W composite films not only maintains lower temperature-sensitivity, but also greatly improves the mechanical properties. In particular, the three MoS2–W composite films embrace good tribology performance at all test temperature, especially 100 °C, at which physical adsorption of H2O is prominently less than that of 25 °C and the oxidation is relatively slight, compared with that of the higher temperature. Individually, the MoS2-8.2%W composite film maintains the optimal tribology performance at any test temperature and becomes self-adaptive to temperature variation, which originates from the optimized structure and good mechanical properties.