Molecular dynamics simulation of intrusion of a C60 molecule ball into sliding contact space

The intrusion process of a C60 ball into a sliding contact space with an included angle made up by two silicon substrates (100) was simulated using the molecular dynamics approach. The simulation was carried out using Tersoff potential of C and Si atoms at room temperature of 300?K. The included angle was defined as initial entry angle changing from 20 degrees to 90 degrees in the simulation for studying the effect of the initial entry angle during the intrusion process. The dependence of the initial entry angle on the number of sticking Si atoms of upper substrate was calculated. The results showed that the number of sticking atoms increased with the increasing of initial entry angle, and the number of sticking atoms was divided into three regions with different slopes, which could be used to evaluate the intrusion performance of a C60 ball into the sliding contact space. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.