Determination of lubricant thickness on magnetic recording heads using XPS

Many techniques are currently available for measuring lubricant thicknesses on magnetic recording disks. This paper describes a method for measuring lubricant thicknesses reproducibly and reliably on magnetic recording heads. Standard XPS disk lubricant thickness methods were used with appropriate modifications to account for substrate differences. Oxygen regions were ratioed instead of carbon, and R ∞ for the heads was experimentally determined to be 0.37. Using these modifications, lubricant thicknesses were measured on heads from two different sources to try and explain file‐level operating differences.