Spreading Characteristics of Monolayer Lubricant Film on Surfaces With Lube Textures

In this paper, from the viewpoint of lubricant spreading, we investigate the effect of lube textures which mean a nonuniform distribution of bonding strength between lubricant molecules and the disk surface. Lube textures were formed by irradiating ultraviolet rays through a stripe-patterned mask onto a magnetic disk surface which was partially coated with one-monolayer film of perfluoropolyether. Surface characteristics of the lube textures were evaluated by surface energies ascertained from contact angle measurements. Spreading of the lubricant film was measured by scanning microellipsometry on the striped lube textures in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the stripes. The thickness-dependent diffusion coefficients extracted from the spreading profiles show that lubricant spreading in the regime of film thickness less than 0.2 nm is faster along the stripes, indicating the possibility of controlling the behavior of a lubricant film with lube textures.