Does Rotational Melting Make Molecular Crystal Surfaces More Slippery?

The surface of a crystal made of roughly spherical molecules exposes, above its bulk rotational phase transition at T= T$_r$, a carpet of freely rotating molecules, possibly functioning as "nanobearings" in sliding friction. We explored by extensive molecular dynamics simulations the frictional and adhesion changes experienced by a sliding C$_{60}$ flake on the surface of the prototype system C$_{60}$ fullerite. At fixed flake orientation both quantities exhibit only a modest frictional drop of order 20% across the transition. However, adhesion and friction drop by a factor of $\sim$ 2 as the flake breaks its perfect angular alignment with the C$_{60}$ surface lattice suggesting an entropy-driven aligned-misaligned switch during pull-off at T$_r$. The results can be of relevance for sliding Kr islands, where very little frictional differences were observed at T$_r$, but also to the sliding of C$_{60}$ -coated tip, where a remarkable factor $\sim$ 2 drop has been reported.

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