Temperature is an important factor that affects the performance of hard disk drive. Through Time-Of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (TOF-SIMS) analysis, the thermal effects on hard disk Z-DOL lubricant is studied, the related thermal evaporation and decomposition mechanism is proposed, and the lubricant composition change on the wear track of the hard disk surface after slider-disk interaction is reported in this paper. (C) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.