Tribological Properties of Oil-Containing Polyimide Aerogels as a New Type of Porous Self-Lubricating Material

• Published in: Industrial & engineering chemistry research 2022-09, Vol.61 (38), p.14222-14231
• Main Authors: Mu, Bo, Yu, Zhenghong, Cui, Jianbing, Yan, Wenrui, He, Huan, Wang, Xia, Guo, Junhong, Tian, Li, Yang, Baoping, Cui, Jinfeng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Materials and Interfaces
• ISSN: 0888-5885; 1520-5045
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.iecr.2c01506

As a type of material with high porosity exhibiting emerging potential in tribology application, polyimide aerogels (PIA) with different crosslinkers (tris­(4-aminophenyl) amine (TAPA) and 1,3,5-tris­(4-aminophenyl) benzene (TAPB)) and different crosslinking degrees were synthesized. The geometry configuration of crosslinkers has a remarkable influence on the morphology/physical properties of PIA including the shrinkage of PIA fabricated with TAPA being more evident and inverse phenomenon being illustrated for the porosity result. Also, the crosslinkers improve the mechanical properties significantlythe modulus of TAPA-PIA-3 reaches up to 14.21 MPa. Meanwhile, crosslinked PIA under dry sliding generally have lower wear rates compared with linear PIA whereas TAPA-PIA incorporating a lubricant have excellent tribological properties with the wear resistance increased by 69.52% and the friction coefficient reduced by 43.72%. Besides the anxo-action of the chain rigidness imparted by TAPA, the non-coplanarity of TAPA contributes to more compact entanglement and stacking of PIA molecules, which both improve the tribological properties correspondingly.