Hard disk drives (“HDDs”) are widely used to store digital data or electronic information for enterprise data processing systems, computer workstations, portable computing devices, digital audio players, digital video players, and the like. Generally, HDDs store data on a disk with a surface of magnetic material. A transducer head, e.g., read/write head, includes a writing component that magnetically polarizes areas of the magnetic material with one or two polarities to encode either binary zeros or ones. Thus, data is recorded as magnetically encoded areas or bits of magnetic polarity. A transducer head also includes a reading component that detects the magnetic polarity of each bit or area and generates an electrical signal that approximates the magnetic polarity. The signal is processed to recover the binary data recorded on the magnetic material.
As the disk rotates, air flow, or pressure, maintains the transducer head above the disk as the transducer head reads and writes information, and moves between information reading and writing positions. The triboligical interactions of the exterior surface of the disk with interfacing material, such as the head, as well as the triboligical interactions of the exterior surface of the disk with environment within the HDD, may result in loss of material from the protective layer of the disk. The process leading to loss of the material making up the protective layer is known as wear. Major types of wear include abrasion from the head contacting the protective layer of the disk, friction between the head and the protective layer of the disk, and corrosion of the protective layer. Wear can be minimized by proper selection of one or more lubricants for the lubricant layer.
It has become a challenge for a single type of lubricant to meet all the demanding requirements of magnetic recording media production and performance. A mixture of different types of lubricant has thus been developed. The problem with using a lubricant mixture is that the lubricants comprising the lubricant mixture may be immiscible leading to phase separation. One solution to the problem is to chemically combine the two or more lubricants into a single molecule. However, this reduces the ability of the lubricant to bond to the media as the number of functional groups in the combined lubricant is reduced. Another solution is to bond one or both types of the lubricant to each side of every disk. This incurs additional operational costs. What is needed is a method for using a wide selection of lubricant mixtures without weakening bonding of the lubricant to the disk or introducing operational costs.