Investigation of wear resistance and lifetime of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coated glass disk in flying height measurement process

Flying height has been greatly reduced to less than 10 nm to achieve high-density magnetic storage. This leads to significant disk wear especially, glass disks used in flying height measurement process. This paper reports the utilization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) overcoat to increase the wear resistance and lifetime of commercial glass disks in a flying height tester. Wear resistance of the DLC coated glass disks was investigated in wear test using a triboindentor. The results showed significant wear resistance improvement of the coated disk where the wear depth reduced from 62.2 nm on an uncoated disk to 5–7 nm on 15-nm thick DLC coated disks. Furthermore, lifetime measurement of the coated disk has been performed in a flying height tester. As a result, lifetime of the coated disk has been drastically improved by more than 30 times in comparison to an uncoated disk.