• A novel polyimide containing POSS was synthesized and used as coating matrix. • The graphene-like MoS 2 was used as solid lubricant to construct composite coating. • The composite coating shows excellent friction-reducing and anti-wear performances. • The synergistic effect of POSS and MoS 2 results in admirable tribology performance. Polyimide (PI) stands out for excellent mechanical properties, high thermal stability and flexible property, however, the large friction coefficient and wear rate are still big issues which limit its application. In this work, we successfully synthesized a novel POSS-containing polyimide by the copolymerization of diamine polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS-diamine), pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) and 4,4′-Oxydianiline (ODA). Subsequently, the POSS-containing polyimide was mixed with self-made graphene-like molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2) to fabricate composite coating POSS-PI/MoS 2. The tribological properties of POSS-PI/MoS 2 are greatly enhanced via the synergistic effects between POSS and graphene-like MoS 2. The combination of 10 wt.% POSS-diamine and 12 wt.% graphene-like MoS 2 with polyimide leads to 368 % increase of wear life (100 s to 468 s) and 83.3 % decrease of friction coefficient (0.12 to 0.02), especially 15 folds of load carrying capacity (1100 N to 15313 N), compared with pure polyimide. In general, the facile and controllable synthesis procedure, versatile and reproducible combination of POSS-diamine, PMDA and ODA, and relatively high tribological properties of the resulting composite coating, prove this method to be instructive significance for preparing high performance composite coating in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]