Friction of graphene on a substrate with a cavity defect

Abstract

The frictional behavior of supported graphene is known to be influenced by the physical properties and surface morphologies of the underlying substrate. However, it is unclear how a surface defect on the substrate affects the friction of supported graphene, and it is even unknown how to define the defect-induced friction force in this context. Here we conduct molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the friction between a square diamond slider and a graphene sheet supported by a copper substrate with a surface cavity defect. Our results demonstrate that the defect-induced friction exhibits a nonlinear increase with cavity size, while it decreases nonlinearly with slider size. We propose that the definition of defect-induced friction can be linked to the increase in friction work over the length of the slider, and is closely correlated to the defect-induced relative change in indentation depth and the ratio of the cavity area to the contact area. These findings provide a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of a substrate cavity defect on the friction of supported graphene and offer insights that may have broader implications for understanding defect-induced friction in other two-dimensional materials.