Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2018
Despite being one of the oldest phenomena known to mankind and its vast use, there still are open questions about the frictional process between two surfaces, especially at the nanometer scale, such as the energy dissipation mechanism, the influence of the crystallographic orientation and the correlation between macroscopic and microscopic scales. In this work, we analyze the interaction between a sharp tip and graphene by friction force microscopy. The graphene surface roughness and adhesion forces with the microscope tip were measured. Neither roughness nor adhesion were observed to influence the friction forces. The scanning velocity dependence of friction was also measured for a different number of layers. The friction forces were observed to increase with the scanning velocity until a critical velocity is achieved by which we have estimated the effective interaction potential between the tip and the graphene surface.