Tribochemical Polishing of Aluminum Oxide in the Atmosphere of CHF₃

Fluorinated hydrocarbon has been used as lubricants on the surface of magnetic hard disk drive. This is because this compound is thermally stable. However it has been found that fluorinated hydrocarbon was degraded on the surface during friction to generate radicals^1,2). Therefore we considered that hard ceramics will be worn out in the gaseous atmosphere of fluorinated hydrocarbon by radical reactions. If the interaction of gas to ceramics is strong, we can expect that the surface will be polished through tribochemical processes. In the present paper, we investigated the characteristic of tribochemical polishing of aluminum oxide against glass in CHF₃ gas atmosphere.