Temperature-controlled molecular dynamics study on velocity-dependent threshold behavior of dynamic nano-friction

Laws of dynamic nano-friction (i.e., continuous wearless friction) were searched for under steady spatial distributions of the local quasi-temperature, by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The temperature control of the non-conservative model was carried out by extending the isothermal MD method using the Nosé–Poincaré thermostat. The results suggested that the threshold phenomenon characterizes sliding-velocity dependence of the nano-frictional force between crystal lattices constituting a nano-electromechanical system (NEMS). This phenomenon was turned out to be a universal feature, whether heat transfer to the environment exists or not.