e. sliding, rolling and rotation. Contact areas and static friction forces of NDs were measured and compared to the DMT-M and FDM contact models. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the ESF project Nr. 2013/0015/1DP/1.1.1.2.0/13/APIA/VIAA/010, the ESF FANAS programme ‘Nanoparma’ and EU through the ERDF (Centre of Excellence ‘Mesosystems: Theory and Applications’, TK114). The work was also partly supported by ETF grants 8420 and 9007, the Estonian Nanotechnology Competence Centre

(EU29996), ERDF ‘TRIBOFILM’ 3.2.1101.12-0028, ‘IRGLASS’ 3.2.1101.12-0027 and SRT1720 cost ‘Nano-Com’ 3.2.1101.12-0010. The authors are grateful to Alexey Kuzmin for the fruitful discussions and to Krisjanis Smits for the help in TEM measurements. Electronic supplementary material Additional file 1: Supplementary materials. The file contains Figures S1 to S6 and discussion on COMSOL simulations.

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