Nanorheological Measurement of Monolayer Lubricant Films Using the Oscillating Optical Fiber Probe

Abstract

We achieved a viscoelastic measurement of monolayer lubricant films using the fiber wobbling method, which is the highly sensitive shear force measuring method that we have developed. In order to make the measurement possible, we attained the accurate determination of nanometer-sized gap widths between sliding surfaces. In addition, we developed a new method to align the parallelism between the sliding surfaces. We observed the differences in the mechanical responses of sheared lubricant films due to their adsorptivity to the substrate surfaces.