Organic surfactants are employed to passivate the surfaces of MEMS devices, such as digital micromirrors. A height of the top surface of the chuck top which corresponds to an arbitrary position specified on the XY coordinate plane by a computer is calculated in each of the four quadrants based on a coordinate transformation formulas. With no current applied to the heater, the protrusion pad is generally flush with the air-bearing surface of the slider. The graphical application may modify a particular display list node corresponding to the particular scene element by modifying a respective attribute stored in the portion of memory allocated to the particular display list node, and render an image of a scene that includes the particular scene element modified according to the notification.