Tribological Characteristics of Diamond-like Carbon Films Based on Hardness of Mating Materials

This study made use of four kinds of mating balls that were made with stainless steel but subjected to different annealing conditions in order to achieve different levels of hardness. In all load conditions, testing results demonstrated that the harder the mating materials, the lower the friction coefficient was. Conversely, the high friction coefficient found in soft martensite balls appeared to be caused by the larger contact area between the DLC film and the ball. Raman Spectra analysis showed that the transferred materials were a kind of graphite and that the contact surface of the DLC film seemed to undergo a phase transition from carbon to graphite during the high friction process.