Tribological investigations of PVD-MoS2 coatings on a ball-on-disk tribometer under vacuum conditions

This data publication contains the results of ball-on-disk tests of PVD-MoS2 coatings under vacuum conditions and supplements the publication “Microstructure, Mechanical Properties and Tribological Behavior of Magnetron-Sputtered MoS2 Solid Lubricant Coatings Deposited under Industrial Conditions”, doi: 10.3390/coatings11040455.

All MoS2 coatings were deposited by magnetron sputtering in an industrial-scale physical vapor deposition unit (H-O-T Härte- und Oberflächentechnik,TT 300 K4, Nürnberg, Germany) at Engineering Design of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Martensstr. 9, 91058 Erlangen, Germany. The operator was Armin Seynstahl. The File All_Samples.csv contains information about the coating’s designation in column 1 and the relevant deposition parameters (in columns 2–9) as follows:

1: Coating designation. 2: Rotation strategy. 3: Rotational speed in rpm. 4: MoS2 target amount.
5: Duration in s. 6: Bias voltage in V. 7: Argon gas flow in sccm. 8: Cathode power in kW.
9: Chamber temperature in °C. The columns are separated by commas.

The names/number in column 1 refer to the names of the folders, which contain the results of ball-on-disk tests.

The ball-on-disk tests were performed at Engineering Design of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Paul-Gordan-Straße 5, 91052 Erlangen,Germany, by using a rotary tribometer in ball-on-disk configuration (KTmfk, HTV-SST). The operator was Armin Seynstahl. Briefly, the disk is held by a driven three-jaw chuck. Normal load is applied on the ball by a spindle-spring assembly driven by a servo motor and controlled to the pre-defined value. The friction force is determined by the deflection of a cantilever, which is detected by strain gauges. Testing was carried out in rotational sliding mode on a defined track radius without any additional lubricant and under vacuum conditions (initial pressure, 0.01 Pa). Heating was not perated. As counter-bodies, 100Cr6 (1.3505, AISI 52100) steel balls (grade G10, ISO 3290, Ra < 0.02 µm) with a diameter of 8 mm were used to reflect an elevated contact stress case. Thus, corresponding initial Hertzian pressure at the contact center was 1.17 GPa. The measured values were recorded at a frequency of 3 Hz.

The data is provided in subfolders, where the .csv files are organized by the coating designation (see file All_samples.csv), each corresponding to a coating with its corresponding number. The data in each .csv file is organized as follows:

The test parameters are listed in lines 1–3:
1: Normal force in N. 2: Track radius in mm. 3: Sliding speed in m/s.
This is followed by 2 blank lines (4 and 5) for separation reasons. From line 6 on, the data is divided into 12 columns. The following information can be found in the respective columns:

1: Time of measurement. 2: Friction force in N. 3: Cycles. 4: Friction coefficient. 5: Sliding distance in m. 6: Normal force in N. 7: Track radius in mm. 8: Pressure (Penning) in mbar. 9: Pressure (DMS) in mbar. 10: Pressure (Pirani) in mbar. 11: Indentation depth in mm (ball into the disc). 12: Heating temperature in °C. The columns are separated by commas.