Classical experiments show that the force required to slide liquid drops on surfaces increases with the resting time of the drop, t(rest), and reaches a plateau typically after several minutes. Here we use the centrifugal adhesion balance to show that the lateral force required to slide a water drop on a graphene surface is practically invariant with t(rest). In addition, the drop's three-phase...

Use of the ultrahigh vacuum methods of surface science allows the preparation and study of highly characterized solid–solid interfaces for tribological investigations. One of the limiting factors in the progress of our understanding of tribology has been the inability to generate solid–solid interfaces with well-defined, reproducible, atomic scale structures and compositions. The preparation of...