FTIR spectroscopy and nanotribological comparative studies: influence of the adsorbed water layers on the tribological behaviour

Under ambient conditions, a water film is always present on a silica substrate and generates additional capillary forces between the nanotip and the studied surface. In the present paper, we report AFM measurements of pull-off and friction forces as a function of the temperature and a comparative FTIR spectroscopy study. The AFM results show a net decrease of the forces as the temperature increases, while the IR spectroscopy indicates that the liquid film is removed at high temperature. Consequently, we deduce that a liquid neck is created between the tip and the surface and that the forces measured are mostly capillary forces. The present work shows that temperature studies with AFM can be a useful way to probe the influence of the capillary force in turn to characterize surface properties.