Thin film ceramic coatings are increasingly being used in lubricated tribological components. Unfortunately,
lubricants formulated with functional additives such as anti-wear and friction modifiers, are usually designed
to interact with ferrousmaterial to formtribochemical surface films.When these lubricants are applied to coated
surfaces, the effectiveness of the additives is still largely unknown. In this study, we evaluated the friction and
wear behavior of several commercially available thin-film ceramic coatings when lubricated with unformulated
and fully formulated synthetic oils to assess the impact of lubricant on such coatings. A variety of behaviorswere
observed for different coatingswhich can be explained in terms of the differences in tribochemical film formation
and properties on the coatings surfaces.