Observations regarding the tribological properties of SiC and AlTiC sliders

To accommodate pseudo-contact and contact recording, new slider materials for high-performance heads must be developed. A new candidate for an advanced slider material is SiC. To compare the tribological properties of SiC with Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/-TiC (AlTiC), today's standard thin film head slider/wafer material, heads with SiC dummy sliders have been manufactured and compared to an AlTiC slider. All test heads were subjected to both dynamic friction testing as well as an AFM mapping. Comparing surface topography and nano-friction, the friction for SiC heads was observed to be highly dependent on its surface roughness and may start out even higher than AlTiC. However, the increase in friction over contact time of SiC is much shallower than for AlTiC, therefore the long term friction and wear performance of SiC sliders is superior.