Active Flying-height Control of Magnetic Head Slider using MEMS Thermal Actuator

Servo Signal Data Processing for Flying Height Control in Hard Disk Drives

In recent years, thermal actuated flying height control has been implemented in Hard Disk Drives (HDD) to reduce the effect of flying height variations due to manufacturing tolerances or write current introduced pole tip protrusion (Fig. 1). A stable low flying height is necessary to achieve low bit error rates (BER) [1]. Thermal flying height control is used in a “static manner” in current dis...

Effect of contact conditions during thermo-mechanical contact between a thermal flying height control slider and a disk asperity

A three-dimensional thermo-mechanical model is developed for the transient contact between a thermal flying height control (TFC) slider and a disk asperity. The effect of contact conditions is investigated, including the friction coefficient and the circumferential disk velocity. The damage of the read–write shields due to contacts with disk asperities is studied along with the maximum temperat...

Simulation of HAMR / Thermal Flying Height Control Sliders

Design and Dynamics of Flying Height Control Slider With Piezoelectric Nanoactuator in Hard Disk Drives

To achieve the areal density goal in hard disk drives of 1 Tbit/ in.2 the minimum physical spacing or flying height (FH) between the read/write element and disk must be reduced to 2 nm. A brief review of several FH adjustment schemes is first presented and discussed. Previous research showed that the actuation efficiency (defined as the ratio of the FH reduction to the stroke) was low due to th...

Numerical simulation of thermal flying height control sliders in heat-assisted magnetic recording

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is one of the most promising techniques to extend the recording density in hard disk drives beyond 1 Tb/in. Although the diameter of the spot on the disk that is heated by the laser beam is very small, on the order of nanometers, high local temperatures on the disk and the heat dissipated in the slider during the light delivery process can cause thermal d...