Z-DOL and carbon overcoat: bonding mechanism

It has been postulated earlier that the bonding between Z-DOL and sputtered carbon occurs when a hydrogen atom is transferred from a hydroxyl end of Z-DOL to a dangling bond site shielded inside the sp³ (diamondlike) granules of the carbon film, and the Z-DOL moiety is linked to the carbon as an alkoxyl group, HO-CH₂-CF ₂-O-(-CF₂-CF₂-O-)_m-(-CF ₂-O-)_n-CF₂-CH₂ -O-[carbon]. The postulated mechanism predicts that the Z-DOL bonding should occur spontaneously if freshly sputtered carbon were exposed to Z-DOL molecules without prior exposure to air, and that, for disks lubricated with Z-DOL, there would be less hydroxyl hydrogens, and there would exist the alkoxyl units depicted above. A recent reported result on vacuum deposition of Z-DOL (without prior exposure to air) clearly revealed the predicted spontaneous bonding, and analyzes by TOF-SIMS of disks lubricated with Z-DOL demonstrated the predicted decrease of the hydroxyl hydrogen and emergence of the predicted alkoxyl units as the bonding fraction of Z-DOL increases