Lubricant Effect on the Micro-Tribological Behavior of Magnetic Coating Formulations—Part 2: Comparison of the Results for the Miscellaneous Lubricants

The magnetic tape industry applies a mixture of stearic acid/butylstearate as a lubricant mixture in their formulation. This lubricant system has several disadvantageous points since it enhances corrosion to the GMR head, due to the existence of the stearic acid free carboxylic group; also, it is not chemically bonded to the tape surface and can freely leave the tape surface in time, leading to inferior winding/unwinding performance of the tape. In this work, we pursue our challenging task for finding a better lubricant(s) to resolve the problems with the current commercial lubricant system. We also continue working with the hypothesized model test sample which imitates the features for the real magnetic tape surface. The goal of this series of work is to correlate between the chemical structures for the miscellaneous lubricants and their micro-tribological behavior at the interface between the sample and reference guide surfaces.