The discovery in 1987 of stable quasicrystals in the Al–Cu–Fe system was soon exploited to patent specific coatings that showed reduced friction in ambient air against hard antagonists. Henceforth, it was possible to develop a number of applications, potential or commercially exploited to date, that will be alluded to in this topical review. A deeper understanding of the characteristics of complex metallic alloys (CMAs) may explain why material made of metals like Al, Cu and Fe offers reduced friction; low solid–solid adhesion came later. It is linked to the surface energy being significantly lower on those materials, in which translational symmetry has become a weak property, that is determined by the depth of the pseudo-gap at the Fermi energy. As a result, friction is anisotropic in CMAs that builds up according to the translation symmetry along one direction, but is aperiodic along the other two directions. A review is given in this article of the most salient data found along these lines during the past two decades or so.
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