TY - JOUR
AU1 - Rismani, Ehsan
AU2 - Yeo, Reuben
AU3 - Sinha, Sujeet
AU4 - Yang, Hyunsoo
AU5 - Bhatia, Charanjit
AB - In this study, a new surface pre-treatment technique has been developed to improve the durability of the ultra-thin tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) coating for magnetic tape drive read/write heads. In this technique, prior to the deposition of an 8-nm ta-C overcoat, a 2-nm thin TiN interlayer was deposited on the heads surface and bombarded with energetic Ar+ and C+ ions. X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy results revealed that this surface pre-treatment technique would lead to the formation of an atomically mixed (AlTi)N
x
C
y
 interlayer which can chemically bond the interlayer to the overcoat and substrate. The effect of this atomically mixed interlayer on the wear resistance of the ta-C coating was investigated using ball-on-flat tests as well as a functional tape drive tester. According to the ball-on-flat test results, the application of the (AlTi)N
x
C
y
 interlayer was able to improve the wear life of the ta-C overcoat by up to 3.3 times as compared to that of the conventional ta-C coating. The results of the wear tests in a real head/tape interface were in agreement with the ball-on-flat results, and showed that while the conventional ta-C film was completely removed from the head surface, the ta-C film with (AlTi)N
x
C
y
 was able to protect the head surface for wear tests of about 1.6 million meters.
TI - Developing an (Al,Ti)N x C y Interlayer to Improve the Durability of the ta-C Coating on Magnetic Recording Heads
JF - Tribology Letters
DO - 10.1007/s11249-013-0115-0
DA - 2013-02-16
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/developing-an-al-ti-n-x-c-y-interlayer-to-improve-the-durability-of-9zQhvKrFEa
SP - 233
EP - 243
VL - 50
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -