Smart materials behavior in phosphates: role of hydroxyl groups and relevance to antiwear films.

The elastic properties of materials under high pressure are relevant to the understanding and performance of many systems of current interest, for example, in geology and tribology. Of particular interest is the origin of the dramatic increase in modulus with increasing pressure, a response which is also called "smart materials behavior." In this context, simple phosphate-containing materials have been studied experimentally and theoretically, and the origins of this behavior have been associated with factors such as coordination of the cations and changes in the degree of polymerization and hydrogenation of the phosphate units. In the present paper we extend the former analysis on simple metal phosphate model compounds to so-called thermal films, an intermediate stage in the formation of effective antiwear films. The material was produced by heating a commercial zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP), a common antiwear additive in lubricating oils, in poly-alpha-olefin base oil solutions to 150 degrees C, a process known to produce the thermal films. Its structure and equation of state were studied by means of x-ray diffraction and IR synchrotron radiation techniques during compression up to 25 GPa in a diamond anvil cell as well as during the subsequent decompression. As is the case for the simple metal phosphates, we find that the thermal films are relatively soft at low pressures but stiffen rapidly and ultimately amorphize irreversibly at high pressure. However, in addition to phase transformations involving cation sites occurring in the metal phosphates studied previously, thermal films undergo displacive transitions associated with instabilities of the hydroxyl groups. These results may imply that ZDDP ligands and those of the transformed materials not only affect ZDDP decomposition rate in engines but also the mechanical properties of the resulting antiwear films.