ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the state of the art of micro/nanotribology of magnetic storage devices including surface roughness, friction, adhesion, scratching, wear, indentation, transfer of material detection, and lubrication. The main conclusions from these studies are that a fractal characterization of surface roughness is scale independent and provides information of the roughness structure at all length scales that exhibit the fractal behavior. Surface roughness and coefficient of friction of various head slider materials were measured by Koinkar and Bhushan. Macroscale friction values for all samples are higher than microscale friction values; the reasons are presented in this chapter. Bhushan et al. examined the relationship between local variations in micros-cale friction force and surface roughness profiles for magnetic media. The chapter examines the mechanism of microscale friction, which may explain the resemblance between the slope of surface roughness profiles and the corresponding friction force profiles.
