Vapor deposition of perfluoropolyether lubricant on fluorinated diamondlike carbon surface

Abstract

According to the demand of extremely increased area density for magnetic data storage, contact recording systems have been proposed where stronger and thinner hard coatings and lubricant films for head-disk interface (HDI) are desired. In this study, two kinds of technique were accomplished and combined in order to satisfy the demands from the HDI development. One is the incorporation of fluorine into the standard diamondlike carbon film (F-DLC). The other is the vapor deposition of perfluoropolyether (VD-PFPE) lubricant on the DLC surface. Two developed techniques are sequentially combined without exposing samples to an atmosphere. The lateral force microscopy test showed that the developed system demonstrated better friction performance than the conventional system. From the results of ball-on-disk tests, it was also found that the improved surfaces of the F-DLC/VD-PFPE system showed good wear durability compared to those of the traditional system. The reason of this improvement will be discussed in this report. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.