Investigation of tribological and read-write performance of textured sliders
Slider surface texturing is a promising new way to improve the tribological performance of future hard disk drives with very low flying heights. In this study, proximity recording sliders with a design flying height of 6 nm at 20 m/s were textured using oxygenated plasma etching. In order to protect the read-write element, texturing of sliders was performed after positioning a mica mask over the read-write element. The tribological and read-write performance of the slider before texturing was compared with the tribological and magnetic performance of the same slider after texturing. It was found that no degradation of the read-write performance occurred and that the tribological performance of the slider was improved after texturing.
The Effect of Slider Texture on the Tribology of Near Contact Recording Sliders
Island-type texture was fabricated on two types of pico-sliders using plasma etching and ion beam etching. Laser–Doppler interferometry was used to investigate the vibrations of textured and untextured pico-sliders in near-contact situations. Lubricant depletion on the disk surface was investigated in the slider “wear tracks” using scanning ellipsometry (Surface Reflectance Analyzer (SRA)). The results show that slider in-plane and out-of-plane vibrations were reduced as a consequence of the texture on the slider surface. In addition, lubricant depletion on the disk surface was found to be less severe for textured sliders than for untextured sliders at flying heights below 10 nm.
Numerical simulation of the steady state flying characteristics of a 50% slider with surface texture
The steady state flying characteristics of a 50% taper-flat two-rail slider with discrete surface texture features have been numerically simulated using finite elements. Various shapes and patterns of surface texture features are considered. This investigation analyzes the dependence of flying height and pitch angle on the height and number of the surface texture features and on the linear velocity. The results suggest that the surface texture does not significantly change the flying behavior at nominal flying heights but the influence of surface texture becomes more important at low spacings. >