Molecular Simulation for Nanolubricant Films in a Head-Disk Interface

摘要

In the field of nanotechnology, knowledge about positions of atoms and molecules and their behavior is important. Therefore, the interest in molecular simulation as an analytical method continues to grow. A large-scale simulation was first performed in the fields of biology, drug industry, and materials engineering, but with the speeding up and a capacity increase of personal computers, molecular simulation became possible even on the personal computer level. The method started quickly spreading as a universal tool. This trend in studies covered the field of tribology as well, in which investigations became more active. In particular, in the case of head-disk interface (HDI) of magnetic disk storage devices, a decrease of a clearance between the head and the disk to 10 nm was an object of the molecular simulation, which allowed realization of its power directly. Besides, the molecular simulation in the case of simulating lubrication by gas molecules [1], the molecular simulation of the surface flow of liquid polymer lubricants, the molecular arrangement, the morphology of molecular presence, the stability of the surface geometry and wettability started to be recognized as an engineering tool [2]. In this work, the method of simulation and recent studies of the method is discussed by taking HDI as the target and by focusing on the molecular simulation of a liquid polymer lubricant, an ever-growing interest.