Lubricant Flow and Evaporation Model for Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording Including Functional End-Group Effects and Thin Film Viscosity

The lubricant covering a hard disk in a heat-assisted magnetic recording drive must be able to withstand the writing process in which the disk is locally heated several hundred degrees Celsius within a few nanoseconds to reduce the coercivity of the media and allow writing of data. As a first step in modeling a robust lubricant, we have developed a simulation tool based on continuum theory that incorporates previously proposed variations of viscosity and an additional component of disjoining pressure due to functional end-groups with film thickness. Here we apply this simulation tool to a conventional perfluoropolyether lubricant, Zdol 2000, for which there exists experimental data. The simulation tool can be used equally well for other lubricants once their properties become known. Simulations at small length and time scales that are unobservable with current experimental capabilities are performed. We investigate the effect of the total disjoining pressure and thin film viscosity on evaporation and lubricant flow for different initial thickness. For films thicker than 1 nm, the inclusion of polar disjoining pressure suppresses the lubricant thickness change due to evaporation and thermocapillary shear stress compared with cases without this component. Thin film viscosity is an important property to consider for thinner lubricants. We also consider how lubricant depletion depends on laser spot size and thermal spot maximum temperature. The smaller spot profiles exhibit side ridges due to thermocapillary shear stress while the larger spot profiles show no side ridges, only a trough due to evaporation. The lubricant depletion zone width and depth increase with increasing thermal spot maximum temperature.