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Micro-Wear Scan Test on the Carbon Overcoats as Thin as 6 nm or Less

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

T.W. Wu
Affiliation:
IBM Research, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120, tsai@almaden.ibm.com
Thomas W. Scharf
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, the Center for MINT, Dept. Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Tuscaloosa, AL
Hong Zhang
Affiliation:
IBM Storage Systems Division, San Jose, CA 95139
John A. Barnard
Affiliation:
University of Alabama, the Center for MINT, Dept. Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Tuscaloosa, AL
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Abstract

Nitrogen-doped carbon (CNx) overcoats, ranging from I to 6nm in thickness, were deposited on magnetic recording disks by a DC-sputtering process. A critical load, based on the first occurrence of coating damage, was used as a semi-quantitative measure of the mechanical strength of these overcoats. It was found that the critical load decreased in a nearly linear manner with the CNx thickness from 6nm down to ∼2nm regime. However, the lnm thick CNx coating deviated from this trend with a significant decrease in critical load. High-resolution SEM was employed to find the critical loads as well as to reveal the details of the coating wear morphology and the CNx failure mechanism

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2000

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References

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