The experiments probed the friction between a silicon sphere and a silicon wafer as the humidity in the surrounding air was varied.
The experiments probed the friction between a silicon sphere and a silicon wafer as the humidity in the surrounding air was varied. Many surfaces get slippery when wet. Some surfaces have the opposite behaviour: they get less slippery. UvA researchers have now shed light on why this is the case. Hydrogen bonds between the surface and the water turn out to play an important role. The research, carried out by PhD candidate Liang Peng in collaboration with five physicists and chemists from UvA, ARCNL and the German Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, was published in Physical Review Letters this week. Peng and collaborators use a clever device, displayed in the image above, to measure the friction between a silicon sphere and a silicon wafer under different wet circumstances.
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