Experimental and Computational Investigation of the Influence of a Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Amorphous Carbon Fluorine Coating on Sliding Friction in Hybrid Ball Bearings

Tribometry experiments have been successfully designed and performed to probe the influence of an amorphous carbon fluorine surface coating on the sliding friction of hybrid ball bearing parts. It was shown, that the surface modification reduces the average friction coefficient under water and perfluoro-polyether lubrication conditions in agreement with measurements of project partners on coated hybrid ball bearings. The obtained data also provided the means for the validation of a novel approach of sliding friction Molecular Dynamics simulations of amorphous coatings. In addition to the verification of the simulations of relative sliding of planar slab models against macroscopic and nanoscopic friction laws, a very good agreement between the computational results and experiments of other researchers validated the approach. Comparing to our own experiments, which were designed to exhibit corresponding conditions, the agreement was even up to quantitative.