Dear Colleagues,

During the last three decades, carbon-based coatings have enjoyed a growing interest in several industrial applications. By tuning the carbon sp³-to-sp² bonding ratio and by alloying the carbon with other elements, the researchers have been able to tailor unique physical, mechanical, and tribological properties in order to satisfy an increased technological demand. Nitrogen doping and other alloying additions like metals, boron, silicon, phosphorous, fluorine, etc., have also been developed to improve their mechanical and tribological properties.

Already in the 1990’s, carbon-based coatings enabled the operation of fuel injectors in gasoline and diesel engines, providing necessary protection against wear, scuffing and other adverse effects of lubricant-lean friction. Nowadays, carbon-based coatings are found in most facets of our daily lives, from the protective films on the hard disks of computers to the lubricious coatings on the blades of a disposable shaving machine. They are used in the chemical, food and packaging industries (valves and cutting hardware), semiconductor processing equipment (wafer handling and mechanical drives of cluster tools), compressors and pumps, and automotive industry (piston rings, camshafts, gears), biomedical applications (stents, heart valves, chirurgical instruments), etc. All the emerging applications of carbon-based coatings are originated in the great variety of crystalline and disordered structures that are possible to obtain by many different deposition techniques.

In this special issue we are requesting original contributions from academic or industrial researchers working on theoretical and/or experimental aspects concerning all kind of carbon-based coatings with improved tribological properties, from basic research to applied (tribological) uses.

Prof. Dr. Esteban Broitman
Dr. James David Schall
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Lubricants is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• carbon-based coatings
• diamond-like coatings (DLC)
• CX coatings (X = metal, N, Si, P, B, F, etc)
• amorphous carbon-based coatings
• nanocrystralline carbon-based coatings
• fullerene-like carbon-based coatings
• multilayers
• PVD coatings
• CVD coatings
• plasma-assisted deposited coatings
• tribology (friction, wear)