The friction and wear behavior of friction materials filled with irregular silica, spherical silica and surface-treated spherical silica particles is discussed in this paper. Compared to irregular silica, spherical silica powders improve the wear resistance, but decrease the friction coefficient. Surface-treated spherical silica powder is more effective in the improvement in the wear resistance, but with the similar friction coefficient of irregular silica-filled materials. This makes it possible to be used as friction-improving fillers in brake materials. Mechanisms for the improvement are also discussed in this paper.