THE DESIGN OF SURFACE MODIFICATION OF AMORPHOUS ZrO2 NANOPARTICLES AS A LUBRICANT ADDITIVE

Abstract

ZrO 2 is a kind of inorganic material with high hardness, high tenacity, antiwear, corrosion, and resistance, therefore it is regarded as an ideal nanolubricant material. But untreated ZrO 2 nanoparticles are reunited in the lubricant medium instead of monodisperse because the consistency is poor between the material surface and lubricant, which restricts its application as a nanolubricant additive. Through theoretical analysis, this paper designed that the surface of ZrO 2 nanoparticles was modified with silicon coupling agent, and it was changed to lipophilic surface, so it was possible to be a monodisperse system in the lubricant. The modified spherical nanoparticles of ZrO 2 were dispersed in the lubricant and they could play a molecular bearing part in lubricating media. When the friction surface reached a certain load and temperature, once the metal surface produces the deficiency, physical adsorption and chemisorption on the metal surface would be produced because of high nano- ZrO 2 particle activity, and even the N atom in the particle surface silane tends to be absorbed to the metal surface to form chelate compound, and make ZrO 2 particles enrich to defective locations of the metal surface. Then, a self-repairing lubricated membrane in the friction surfaces was set up, and it can play the function in the antifriction, antiwear, and surface dynamic self-repair.