Tribological Properties of CNT microspheres as a Lubricant Additive

Friction and wear are important phenomenon directly related to the efficiency and reliability of the mechanical systems. Lubricating oils have been used as one traditional approach to reducing friction and wear, which have contributed to significantly extending the lifetime of tribological components. To further improve the lubricating ability of the oils, nanoparticles have been introduced as lubricant additives, and several studies have reported that the shape of nanoparticles could significantly affect its tribological performances of oils. In this work, the tribological performances of the oil containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and CNT microspheres as lubricant additives, respectively, were evaluated in terms of friction and wear to investigate the effect of CNTs shape on lubricating ability. For this purpose, CNT microspheres consisting of CNT particles were successfully prepared using water-in-oil method and the suspensions of sunflower oil, one of the vegetable oils, were prepared in which CNTs and CNT microspheres were added at 0.01 wt.