Evaluation of lubricant coverage on thin-film magnetic discs by atomic force microscopy

The development of molecular-scale understanding of lubrication and wear on thin film media is emerging as a challenge for designing new processing techniques to produce discs to meet the extreme demands of the narrowing head-disc gap. It is known that to reduce the wear generated during the contact-start-stop operation, hard overcoats and liquid lubricant films are topically applied to the disc surface [1].