Low stiction/low glide height head–disk interface for high-performance disk drives (invited)

Abstract

A brief historical review of the head–disk interface evolution is presented, and current limitations when facing stringent tribology requirements for high-density recording are addressed. The tribology performance of sliders with contact landing pads on the air bearing surfaces (the “padded slider”) was studied. Lightly mechanically textured disks, and laser zone-textured disks with shallow bumps (the “light LZT”) to reduce glide avalanche that were specially designed for padded sliders were used. When the smoother mechanically textured surface was applied, we observed inferior constant start-stop (CSS) durability due to possible tribological degradation of the padded slider, and significant landing pad wear was observed on the slider after the CSS test. Rougher surfaces including the light LZT surface, however, were not as sensitive to tribological degradation of the padded slider as the smoother surface, and exhibited better CSS durability as well as less landing pad wear after the test. Hence the optimization effort of padded slider head/disk component design may be reduced if a light texture is applied on the CSS zone. The head–disk interface consisting of a padded slider on a light LZT can better meet the stringent tribology requirements for high density recording needs and therefore it is proposed as an alternative to ramp loading technology in the desktop/server-class disk drives. Hence the better-understood CSS technology is expected to be further extended into future high-performance disk drives.

Study of the stiction free magnetic recording head with DLC pad

“…As a method to reduce stiction, technical developments done so far include laser zone texture disk technology to add texture on landing zone of a magnetic disk by laser technique (Liu et al 2000), and diamond-likecarbon (DLC) pad technology where small projections are made by DLC on magnetic head slider (Kasamatsu et al 1995;Yamamoto et al 1998;Fua et al 1999;Gui et al 2000;Yamamoto et al 2001;Li et al 2002). In the former case, as FH becomes under 1 lin.…”

A novel laser bump design for low glide/low stiction disk

“…In early studies, Fu and Suzuki (1999) presented the contact start/stop (CSS) performance of a different kind of disk topography. Yamamoto et al (1995, 1998) used a stiction free slider and a smooth disk to decrease the stiction to obtain a lower glide avalanche.…”

Numerical Simulation of the Head/Disk Interface for Patterned Media

“…Gui et al [4] and Fua et al [5] studied padded sliders and reported that padded sliders have benefits in terms of reducing head/disk interactions and friction during contact start stop. Li et al [6] studied the pressure of pattern on two-rail slider bearings and found that patterned sliders showed better stiction properties than unpatterned sliders.…”