Wear-resistance enhancement of graphene oxide/zirconia nanosheets composite coatings based on 2D-2D interlayer sliding structure

In this work, large-size and ultra-thin two-dimensional (2D) zirconia nanosheets (ZrO2 NSs) were firstly synthesized by wet chemical template method, and then graphene oxide-zirconia nanosheets (GO-ZrO2 NSs) composite coating with excellent wear-resistance and friction-reduction performances was constructed. The friction and wear tests indicated the GO-ZrO2 NSs coating presents the lowest friction coefficient of less than 0.12 and the highest service life of more than 20,000 cycles among the prepared series of coatings in air environment under conditions of 0.25 N and 0.02 m/s. Compared with the GO-ZrO2 nanoparticles (GO-ZrO2 NPs) coating, its excellent tribological properties are related to the 2D-2D interlayer sliding structure, which can share the normal pressure and the easy friction-induced formation of amorphous transfer film.