A Molecular Dynamics Study on the Static and Dynamic Properties of Lubricant PFPE in Hard Disk Driver

The static and dynamic properties of lubricant PFPE are important for the service durability and reliability of the computer head-disk device. Thus molecular dynamic simulations based on a coarse-grained, bead-spring model are adopted to study those properties. On the one hand, we investigate the static properties and infer the structure of both nonpolar and polar PFPE films. For a nonpolar PFPE film, there is a layering structure in the surface layer. And for a polar PFPE film, besides layering structure, there is a bi-polymer structure in the bulk layer. On the other hand, we investigate the dynamic properties and find that for nonpolar PFPE film, a precursor film around one atomic diameter thickness develops according to layering structure; while for polar PFPE film, besides a precursor film, a much steeper and slower spreading shape appears according to bi-polymer structure.