Friction boosted by spontaneous epitaxial rotations

It is well known in surface science that incommensurate adsorbed monolayers undergo a spontaneous, energy-lowering epitaxial rotation from aligned to misaligned relative to a periodic substrate. We show first of all that a model 2D colloidal monolayer in an optical lattice, of recent importance as a frictional model, also develops in full equilibrium a small rotation angle, easy to detect in the Moir\'{e} pattern. The colloidal monolayer misalignment is then shown by extensive sliding simulations to increase the dynamic friction by a considerable factor over the aligned case. More generally, this example suggests that spontaneous rotations are rather ubiquitous and should not be ignored in all tribological phenomena between mismatched lattices.