FRICTION AND WEAR OF CERAMICS FOR MAGNETIC RECORDING APPLICATIONS .2. FRICTION MEASUREMENTS

Friction and wear experiments have been conducted under lightly loaded conditions (less than 0.1 MPa) on a number of single crystal and polycrystalline ceramics in sliding contact against magnetic thin-film hard disk and against themselves in order to compare their tribological behavior. The ceramics studied range from single crystal diamond and sapphire to polycrystalline engineering ceramics such as manganese-zinc ferrite, alumina-titanium carbide, and zirconia. The results are analyzed in the context of earlier work on the friction and wear of these ceramics under lightly loaded conditions which has been recently reviewed by Chandrasekar and Bhushan (1990).