PMSE 529 |
| Commercial magnetic tape has a mixture of a fatty acid and a fatty acid ester, such as stearic acid and butyl stearate a lubricant. These lubricants transfer from the tape to the recording head where they cause fouling and may corrode GMR read heads. Abrasive additives, such as alumina are added to the tape to remove the transferred material from the head. However, the abrasives increase the head-tape spacing, thereby degrading the recording performance. In the current study, we replace the small molecule lubricants with block copolymer oligomers containing an aliphatic or perfluorinated block and a urethane block. Our purpose in using bound lubricant is to omit the abrasive particles and obtain ultra-smooth low affinity tape surfaces. The challenge is also to create a model system that better describes and evaluates the lubricity efficiency of each lubricant by studying their microtribological behavior under variable testing conditions in terms of their coefficient of friction. The current study aims at investigating the microtribological characteristics of samples containing stearic acid as a commercial lubricant in comparison with our innovated lubricants.
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New Concepts in Polymeric Materials
1:30 PM-4:45 PM, Thursday, August 23, 2007 Westin Boston Waterfront -- Grand Ballroom D, Oral
Division of Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering |