Laser generation of elliptical nanometre and sub-nanometre bump arrays on NiP/Al data storage disks and their effect on stiction performance

Abstract

Elliptical nano-bumps on nickel-phosphorus coated aluminium (NiP/Al) hard disks were fabricated by a laser texturing system (maximum power 8 W, maximum frequency 300 kHz). By carefully selecting the level of laser power attenuation and defocus offset distance, bump height can be controlled below 6 nm and down to the sub-nanometre scale. This type of laser-induced texture (elliptical shape) on a disk surface is expected to provide better control of the stiction force along with the smallest separation distance between the head slider and the disk. Quantitative modelling based on the classical Hertzian theory for elliptic contacts has been carried out with the purpose of predicting the stiction behaviour of the presented elliptical shaped sub-10 nm bumps. It has been found that an elliptical shape not only reduces the overall stiction performance of the laser texturing zone (LZT) compared to the conventional circular shape but also extends the occurrence of the 'stiction wall' towards the sub-10 nm regime for ultra-low-glide applications.

Fabrication of hybrid nanostructured arrays using a PDMS/PDMS replication process

“…Fabrication processes of ordered nanostructure arrays have recently attracted a vast amount of research attention for being applied to many functional applications, such as surface plasmonics, [1][2][3] high density data storage, 4,5 photonic devices, 6 nano-filtration, 7 and chemical and biological sensors. 8,9 Standard lithography techniques such as X-ray, E-beam and focused ion beam lithography are methods used to fabricate high-resolution nanostructured arrays.…”

Fabrication of plasmonic devices using femtosecond laser-induced forward transfer technique

“…The laser direct-writing (LDW) technique has attracted a particular interest of researchers in surface patterning applications on micrometer and nanometer scales [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. This technique offers significant advantages in terms of processing speed and simplicity with high throughput, which is much faster than other maskless fabrication techniques [11][12][13][14].…”