 thumb|incommensurable due to twisting, so the valleys and hills don't line up. superlubricity is a regime of motion in which friction vanishes or very nearly vanishes. superlubricity may occur when two crystalline surfaces slide over each other in dry incommensurate contact. this effect, also called structural lubricity, was suggested in 1991 and verified with great accuracy between two graphite surfaces in 2004.superlubricity of graphite martin dienwiebel, gertjan s. verhoeven, namboodiri pradeep, joost w. m. frenken, jennifer a. heimberg, and henny w. zandbergen phys. rev. lett. 92, 126101 (2004)   the atoms in graphite are oriented in a hexagonal manner and form an atomic hill-and-valley landscape, which looks like an egg-crate. when the two graphite surfaces are in registry (every 60 degrees), the friction force is high. when the two surfaces are rotated out of registry, the friction is largely reduced. this is like two egg-crates which can slide over each other more easily when they are "twisted" with respect to each other. observation of superlubricity in microscale graphite structures was reported in 2012,observation of superlubricity in microscale graphite ze liu, jiarui yang, francois grey, jefferson zhe liu, yilun liu, yibing wang, yanlian yang, yao cheng, and quanshui zheng phys. rev. lett. 108, 205503 (2012)  by shearing a square graphite mesa a few micrometers across, and observing the self-retraction of the sheared layer. such effects were also theoretically described superlubricity through graphene multilayers between ni(111) surfaces for a model of graphene and nickel layers. this observation, which is reproducible even under ambient conditions, shifts interest in superlubricity from a primarily academic topic, accessible only under highly idealized conditions, to one with practical implications for micro and nanomechanical devices.graphite super lube works at micron scale philip robinson, chemistry world, 28 may 2012  a state of ultralow friction can also be achieved when a sharp tip slides over a flat surface and the applied load is below a certain threshold. such "superlubric" threshold depends on the tip-surface interaction and the stiffness of the materials in contact, as described by the tomlinson model. transition from stick-slip to continuous sliding in atomic friction: entering a new regime o
Condensed_matter_physics