Frictional Dissipation and Interfacial Glass Transition of Polymeric Solids

We present single contact friction experiments between a glassy polymer and smooth silica substrates grafted with alkylsilane layers of different coverage densities and morphologies. This allows us to adjust the polymer-substrate interaction strength. We find that, when going from weak to strong interaction, the response of the interfacial junction where shear localizes evolves from that of a highly viscous threshold fluid to that of a plastically deformed glassy solid. This we analyze as resulting from an interaction-induced "interfacial glass transition" helped by pressure.