Nanofriction under the lens of MD simulations

The high complexity of dealing with systems with many degrees of freedom under a strict size confinement arises especially in sliding friction phenomena, where the key mechanisms take place at a buried interface. In the last three decades, developments in nanotechnology have extended the experimental study of friction, permitting the analysis on well-characterized materials and surfaces at the nano and mesoscale. Here, by presenting three case studies related to the frictional properties of deposited metallic clusters [1,2], physisorbed graphene nanoribbons [3,4], and instabilities in disordered materials [5,6], I show how modeling and molecular dynamics simulations can help in advancing our theoretical understanding in the field of nanotribology.