Spatial variation in nanoscale wear behavior of chemical vapor deposited monolayer WS2

H Rai and D Thakur and D Kumar and A Pitkar and ZJ Ye and V Balakrishnan and NN Gosvami, APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCE, 605, 154783 (2022).

DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2022.154783

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are potential solid lubricants for a wide range of tribological applications. However, such atomically thin lubricants require detailed understanding of mechanisms underlying their tribological characteristics. In the present study, the nanoscale wear behavior of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS2) was investigated using a combination of atomic force mi- croscopy (AFM) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The critical load to initiate wear in the interior region of the WS2 monolayer was found to be higher than the regions near the edge. Experimental findings also reveal significant variability in critical load values in both regions. The observed difference in wear behavior can be attributed to the presence of structural defects as elucidated from MD simulations. Our combined experi-mental and simulation study provides fundamental insights into the atomistic wear mechanism of monolayer WS2.

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