ANISOTROPIC WEAR OF FERRITE SLIDING ON CoCr TAPE

Tribological phenomena of CoCr tapes and ferrite heads on VCR are not well known. The wear characteristics of ferrites having some crystalline planes were investigated by a new technique of wear volume measurement. It was found that (211) plane shows an extraordinarily anisotropic wear behavior in which two anti-parallel directions of ‹111› axis have wear rates which differ by the order of two. Consequently, the improper use of (211) sliding surface as a magnetic head was shown to result in a change of head contour and poor gap precision through sliding with CoCr tape. Coating of the CoCr tape with the diamond-like-carbon thin film was effective to nullify this anisotropic wear characteristics.