Study of Molecular Conformation of PFPE Lubricants With Multidentate Functional Groups on Magnetic Disk Surface by Experiments and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

The molecular height corresponding to monolayer thickness of several types of PFPE lubricants (Z-dol2000, Z-tetraol, A20H2000, ARJ-DS, ARJ-DD, and OHJ-DS) with different molecular structures was estimated from their spreading profiles. The molecular height of Z-dol2000 was smaller than that of Z-tetraol, even though these lubricants had almost equal molecular weights. This result shows that the molecular height of the lubricant with high-polarity end groups was higher than that of the lubricant with low-polarity end groups. ARJ-DD showed higher molecular height than ARJ-DS, because the polarity of the two OH end groups in ARJ-DS was lower than that of the four OH end groups in ARJ-DD. On the other hand, OHJ-DS showed a low molecular height even though it had the highest molecular weight and four OH functional groups. Thus, a lubricant molecule with a low polarity per segment of the main chain has a low molecular height and shows a low degree of conformation on a carbon surface. These experimental results agreed with molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that lubricants with multidentate functional groups having strong polarities do not exhibit a flat conformation on a disk surface because the lubricant molecules form random coil shapes on account of the strong polarity. On the basis of these results, we propose a design rule for lubricant molecules to achieve flat conformation on magnetic disks, i.e., a flat molecular conformation can be achieved on a magnetic disk surface by using molecules that have multisegments with a weak polar function like as OHJ-DS.