From Nanotribology to Intermolecular Forces Dr. Elisa Riedo Institut de Physique des Nanostructures (IPN) Faculte Sciences de Base (FSB) Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Nanotribology is the study of friction and adhesion forces at the nanoscale. The fundamental understanding of sliding friction and adhesion forces between dry and lubricated surfaces is crucial in fields as widespread as earthquake dynamics and human joints. From a technological point of view, with the miniaturization of moving components in many technological devices, such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and magnetic hard disk drives, it has become of primary importance to study surface forces like friction, viscous drag and adhesion at micro and nanoscales. Despite to its scientific and technological importance, there are still no generally accepted explanations for the basic laws of friction, furthermore the interlink between nanotribology and other research areas such as wetting phenomena, gas-liquid-solid phase transitions under nanoconfinement makes this subject particularly challenging. In this seminar I will present a general overview on friction on lubricated and dry surfaces. In the first part, I will focus the attention on the wetting processes and on the physics of liquids under nanoconfinement. In particular I will present some recent results on the kinetics of capillary condensation in nanoscopic sliding friction. In the second part, I will show how sliding friction can be related to the thermally activated hopping of the atoms forming the contact on an effective atomic interaction potential. Finally, future developments of this work will be discussed.