Promising solid lubricant coatings for use in the normal atmosphere and vacuum

The paper identifies the spacecraft friction units, where the solid lubricant coatings are used. Analysis of the literature data on tribological testing of the solid lubricant coatings based on MoS2 from various foreign manufacturers, i.e. Movic, Surftech, Hohman, Teer-Ti, CSEM-Ti and CSEM-AI, shows that the longest service life in the dry and humid atmosphere conditions with the satisfactory antifriction properties is provided by friction pairs with the CSEM-Ti coating. Service life of this solid lubricant coating applied by the closed field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating (CFUBMSIP) technique is 10 times higher in the normal atmospheric conditions than that of a similar domestic VNII NP 212 suspension application. Friction coefficients of the solid lubricant coatings based on the MoS2 from various manufacturers under dry nitrogen conditions (0.01...0.07) are significantly lower than under friction conditions in air (0.04...0.12). The paper establishes that relative wear of a coating based on the MoS2 + TiN applied by the CFUBMSIP technique with inclusion of the titanium nitride solid phase is on average 1000 times lower than that of the combined solid lubricant coatings based on the MoS2 obtained by a similar method with various metal fillers and by suspension or magnetron spraying.
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