Despite its ubiquitousness, friction remains poorly understood, still challenging physicists and engineers more than 500 years after the Da Vinci\92s first attempt to characterize it. A theory capable of predicting the frictional behavior between bodies, once the materials and interface properties are given, still remains a dream. I will present our latest progresses in the basic understanding of the friction physics and its impact on nanomanipulation and macroscale mechanics. Most of the friction control techniques adopted by mechanical engineers do not apply at the nanoscale where physical laws scale differently and the leading mechanisms are adhesion and atomic periodicity rather than inertia and surface roughness. New friction control techniques we have recently proposed, both an the nano and micron scale, will be illustrated and discussed.
Despite its ubiquitousness, friction remains poorly understood, still challenging physicists and engineers more than 500 years after the Da Vinci\92s first attempt to characterize it. A theory capable of predicting the frictional behavior between bodies, once the materials and interface properties are given, still remains a dream. I will present our latest progresses in the basic understanding of the friction physics and its impact on nanomanipulation and macroscale mechanics. Most of the friction control techniques adopted by mechanical engineers do not apply at the nanoscale where physical laws scale differently and the leading mechanisms are adhesion and atomic periodicity rather than inertia and surface roughness. New friction control techniques we have recently proposed, both an the nano and micron scale, will be illustrated and discussed.
