Compliance and viscosity of magnetic tape layers

ABSTRACT

Viscoelastic characteristics of polymer materials used in a fourth-generation archival magnetic tape are discussed. Results from creep experiments are presented, as well as transformed results from dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Time-temperature superposition and frequency-temperature superposition are used to predict properties beyond time and frequency ranges used for experiments. The role of constituent polymers in determining fundamental compliance and viscous characteristics of the magnetic tape layers is described. Comparisons are made between creep-compliance and dynamic-compliance. Viscosity parameters from Kelvin-Voigt curve fits of creep data are also compared with complex viscosity from DMA.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance
• creep
• dynamic mechanical analysis
• magnetic tape
• rule-of-mixtures
• viscosity

Acknowledgment

Dynamic mechanical analysis was performed at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California with the assistance of T. Magbitang. The chemical analysis was performed by W. McKinley of the IBM Systems Group Materials Lab in Tucson, Arizona. The author would also like to acknowledge Dr. Richard Bradshaw for his valuable insights into the properties and characteristics of magnetic tapes.