<title>Surface roughness investigations of thin film disks used in magnetic recording technology</title>

Abstract

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) is used to study the surface roughness of thin film magnetic recording disks obtained from various vendors. The height distributions of the disk surfaces are obtained and the bearing area curves are examined using `probability scaling.'' Skewness and kurtosis of the individual disk surfaces are calculated and deviation of the height distributions and bearing area curves from Gaussian behavior is determined. Surface roughness data from scanning tunneling microscopy measurements are compared qualitatively with those obtained from optical noncontact profilometry.