Interfacial Junctions and Cavitation

Abstract

Understanding the atomistic mechanisms, energetics, structure, and dynamics underlying the interactions and physical processes that occur when two materials are brought together, separated, or rub against each other (hence the term tribology, from the Greek tribos, meaning to rub) is fundamentally important to many basic and applied problems. Examples include adhesion, capillarity, contact formation, surface deformation, elastic and plastic response characteristics, hardness, micro- and nanoindentation, friction, lubrication, wear, fracture, atomic-scale probing, and modifications and manipulations of materials surfaces. These considerations have for over a century motivated extensive theoretical and experimental research into the above phenomena and their technological consequences.Explorations of materials systems and phenomena in the nanoscale regime often require experimental probes and theoretical and computational methods that allow investigations with refined spatial, as well as temporal, resolution. Consequently, until recently most theoretical approaches to the above issues, with a few exceptions, have been anchored in continuum elasticity and contact mechanics. Experimental observations and measurements of surface forces and the consequent materials response to such interactions have been macroscopic in nature.