High Temperature Lubrication with Phosphate Esters

Recent work with phosphate esters has shown that a lubricious polymeric film can formed from the vapor phase on interacting during and sliding. This lubrication technique has led to methods to reduce friction and wear to very low values at high temperatures up to 700$^{\circ}$C. Preliminary with synthetic tri aryl phosphates are very promising. The vaporized lubricant forms a polymeric film on the sliding and rolling surfaces reducing the coefficient of friction below 0.05. In-situ formation of the polymeric films shows that the polymer that is formed on the surface exists in different states depending on surface temperature.