Nanomechanical Property Measurements for Sub-10 nm Thick Solid Films with
Application in Magnetic Storage
ABSTRACT–In the magnetic storage industry, thin film carbon overcoats play a critical role in
reducing magnetic and physical spacing between the recording slider and the rotating disk so that
the information stored per unit area is maximized. Thin film carbon overcoats have been
improved such that they exhibit higher hardness with lower thickness of few nanometers and still
are able to perform reliably. In this presentation, nanoindentation and nanoscratch techniques to
measure nanomechanical properties, namely hardness, elastic modulus and shear strength of thin
solid films will be presented along with a newly developed high resolution force transducer and a
correction to the classic Oliver-Pharr nanoindentation technique. It was shown that the
properties and wear behavior of sub-10 nm thick film carbon overcoats were reliably measured.
These techniques could be applied to different thin solid films on substrates, and they are not
restricted to magnetic storage systems.
Andreas A Polycarpou is currently an Associate Professor and Kritzer Faculty Scholar at the
Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University at Buffalo,
NY in 1994. Before joining the University of Illinois in 1999, he was a visiting lecturer at the
University at Buffalo from 1994-1995, a post-doctoral fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of
Technology from 1995-1997, and from 1997-1999 he was a staff scientist at Seagate
Technology. Polycarpou’s research group at the University of Illinois includes a dozen graduate
students and post docs and studies micro/nanotribology, microtribodynamics, surface
characterization and dynamics of magnetic head disk interfaces, MEMS, and conventional
engineering surfaces. Polycarpou is the author and co-author of over 90 archival journal papers,
3 book chapters, the editor of 5 volume proceedings, and holds 11 US patents. He is the
recipient of several awards including the 2007 Edmond E. Bisson Award, Society of Tribologists
and Lubrication Engineers, a 2007 Fulbright Scholar, The J. William Fulbright Foreign
Scholarship Board, Cyprus, the NSF CAREER award, the 2001 Burt L. Newkirk Award, the
1997 Reviewer of the Year Award for the ASME Journal of Tribology. He is a past Chair of the
ASME Tribology Division, and also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Tribology and he is
on the Editorial Board of the Review of Scientific Instruments and Microsystem Technologies.
BIO:
Professor Andreas A Polycarpou
* and Kritzer Faculty Scholar
Mechanical Science and Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
United States of America
* Effective August 15, 2008