Experimental and Theoretical Study of Replenishment Speed of Depleted Scar in Submonolayer Lubricant

The evaluation of submonolayer lubricant mobility is becoming increasingly important in hard disk drives, in which the thickness of the lubricant has been reduced to one monolayer and that of the mobile lubricant layer has been reduced to less than 0.3 nm. To decrease the head–disk spacing significantly, a design concept of surfing–recording is proposed, in which a protruding small head’s surface slides on the mobile lubricant layer without solid–solid contact [1]. However, its feasibility has not yet been confirmed because the durability of the mobile and bonded lubricants with respect to the head–disk sliding contact has not been elucidated well.