Dry Film Lubricants for Heaterless Actuators

Many goals for space exploration require surface mobility over much longer ranges and at colder temperatures than ever before, e.g., the lunar surface at night reaches down to -180°C and permanently shadowed regions have temperatures of -230°C. The current approach for long-life, low-temperature mechanisms is to use wet-lubricated actuators that require preheating to operate in environments below -55°C. However, this consumes a substantial amount of the energy available and reduces science payload operational time which is likely untenable for icy world missions due to the extreme environment and highly constrained energy use. Therefore, exploration of icy world surfaces may only be achieved using dry film lubricant (DFL) coatings for heaterless actuation. However, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding of DFL properties and performance at cryogenic temperatures. This project will use reactive molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the mechanisms of lubrication for the most common space DFL, molybdenum disulfide, with specific focus on behavior and performance of the material at cryogenic temperature. The simulations will be used to answer three key questions: How does the mechanism of dry film lubrication change with decreasing temperature? How is the DFL mechanism at low temperature affected by oxygen? What approaches might be used to improve performance at cryogenic temperatures? The answers to these fundamental questions may enable the design of reliable, long-life heaterless actuators for very low-temperature mechatronics to be used in exploration of icy worlds.

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