HAMR HDD shock responses

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and slim mobile hard disk drives (HDD) are being developed parallelly to maintain cost advantage over the solid state drive. Operational shock and non-operational shock capabilities are seriously challenged for the slim HDDs due to reduced stiffness (thickness). It is worse for slim HAMR drives due to additional laser diode (LD) and other necessities being added on slider. Shock tests are part of the key performance matrices that must be passed in HDD reliability tests, and the concerns for HAMR mobile drives are, (1) slider lift-off G-level degradation during op-shock, and (2) LD back-to-back hitting during non-operational shock. We studied a few potential HAMR HGA designs, also analyzed a design that improves drive op-shock performances.     

Modeling laser induced lubricant depletion in heat-assisted-magnetic recording systems using a multiple-layered disk structure

In this paper, we model the depletion of lubricant from a disk surface subject to heating by a scanning laser in a heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) system. A multi-layer disk structure is used consisting of the substrate (either glass or aluminum), the CoFe based soft magnetic under- layer, a Ru based intermediate layer, a CoCrPt based recording layer, the diamond-like-carbon layer, and the lubricant film. The thickness and material properties of the different layers are shown to play an important role in the conduction of heat from the top layer to the bottom layer and, consequently, in the lubricant depletion process due to heating by a scanning laser. The results show that it is critical to include realistic multi-layer disk structures in HAMR lubricant depletion modeling.     

Direct Monte Carlo simulation of air bearing effects in heat-assisted magnetic recording

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising high density recording technology in current hard disk industry. It is proposed to use a heat source from the slider system for heating up the recording media in order to increase its storage density. The heat generated from a heat spot on the disk and/or the higher slider body temperature in HAMR system could affect the slider air bearing and flying height. This paper studies the heat effects on slider air bearing characteristics by using the direct Monte Carlo simulation (DSMC) method. The simulation results show that the heat spot less than 50?nm in diameter could not affect much to the air bearing; however, its location should be away from the bearing pressure peak to minimize the heat spot effect. Furthermore, high temperature slider could increase the bearing pressure and force and the trend of force increment is independent of the flow channel length.     

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/in². 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 deformations of both the disk and the slider, thereby affecting the flying characteristics at the head-disk interface. In this paper, a finite element model is developed which incorporates a HAMR optical system into a thermal flying height control (TFC) slider with dual heater/insulator elements to study the effect of heat dissipation in the wave guide on the thermal deformation and flying characteristics of a HAMR-TFC slider. In addition, the power input of the laser and design parameters of the heaters are investigated.     

Experimental study of lubricant depletion in heat assisted magnetic recording: different lubricants on HAMR media

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising choice to surpass the super-paramagnetic limit in magnetic recording and to allow continued increase in the areal recording density of hard disk drive. However, lubricant depletion on disk surface might be a problem in HAMR due to high temperature during writing process. In this work, depletion of four types of commercial lubricants on our HAMR media has been evaluated under equivalent HAMR conditions. Linear relationships between the lubricant depletion depth and the logarithm of the equivalent laser heating time have been established for these lubricants. The depletion depths of the lubricants at different laser heating durations are predicated. It is found that the performance of the four evaluated lubricants is acceptable in respect of lubricant depletion depth by hypothesizing the total heating duration for a given point on the media over the lifetime of the drive is 10⁶ ns.     

Experimental study of lubricant depletion in heat assisted magnetic recording: effects of laser heating duration and temperature

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising approach to overcome the superparamagnetic limit in magnetic recording and enable large increases in the storage density of hard disk drives. However, it is expected that HAMR causes lubricant depletion problem on disk surface under the high temperature in the heating assisted writing process. In this study, the effects of laser heating duration and laser heating temperature on lubricant depletion are studied experimentally. It is found that lubricant depletion depth is linearly proportional to the logarithm of laser heating duration. Lubricant depletion can be mitigated effectively by lowering laser heating temperature. Lubricant depletion depth over the life-time of the drive is also predicted.     

Back heating effect of media hot spot at nanoscale head–disk interface

Microsystem Technologies - Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is one of prospective high density recording technologies in current hard disk industry due to its theoretical potential. In this...     

磁悬浮硬盘中非记录磁场的研究

介绍了磁悬浮硬盘的概念，测量并分析了普通硬盘的音圈电机和主轴电机产生的非记录磁场以及磁悬浮硬盘中的磁力轴承产生的非记录磁场，分析了非记录磁场对记录磁场的影响，为磁悬浮硬盘的设计和研究提供了依据。     

Experimental set-up for simultaneously measuring changes in LD temperature and flying height of HAMR-HGA

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising technology for overcoming the performance limit of the conventional magnetic head in a hard disk drive. The HAMR-HGA consists of a HAMR-head slider, a suspension, and a laser diode (LD) mounted on the slider. An optical near-field transducer (NFT) and a waveguide are near the write-pole in the head slider. During the HAMR process, current is applied to an LD, and the laser beam is coupled into the waveguide and delivered to the NFT. The NFT further concentrate the focused optical spot and the optical spot locally heats the recording medium, thereby reducing the media coercivity. The temperature of the LD and the slider, however, increases. The slider is, moreover, locally deformed, and the flying-height (FH) changes. Therefore, an experimental set-up to simultaneously evaluate the FH change and LD temperature of the HAMR-HGA was required to develop the HAMR technology. We developed a novel experimental set-up for simultaneously evaluating laser characteristics (power, voltage, and wavelength), the increase in LD temperature, and the FH change of a HAMR-HGA. By using this set-up to measure these characteristics of our prototype, the HAMR-HGA showed that the FH decreased as the LD temperature increased. The LD temperature is directly related to the laser characteristics. The change in laser characteristics affects the read-write performance of HAMR. The FH change also affects the performance. Therefore, the developed experimental set-up should be useful in improving HAMR-HGA.     

Experiments on slider lubricant interactions and lubricant transfer using TFC sliders

Future magnetic storage density targets (>4 Tb/in. ²) require subnanometer physical clearances that pose a tremendous challenge to the head disk interface (HDI) design. A detailed understanding of slider-lubricant interactions at small clearances and contact is important to not only address magnetic spacing calibration and long term HDI reliability but also to meet additional challenges imposed by future recording architectures such as heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). In this work, the behavior of the disk lubricant is investigated through controlled tests using TFC sliders which are actuated to proximity (i.e. backoff) and into contact (i.e. overpush) on one specific half of the disk per rotation by synchronization with the spindle index. Observations for lubricant distribution in contact tests (i.e. overpush) reveal an accumulation of lubricant on the disk near the onset of contact suggesting a migration of lubricant from the slider to the disk as the slider approaches the disk. Experiments also reveal that there is a similar deposition of lubricant even in the absence of contact for backoff tests. Furthermore, light contact tests result in significant lubricant rippling and depletion with associated slider dynamics. The lubricant rippling frequencies correlate well with the slider’s vibration frequencies. Interestingly, strong overpush may lead to stable slider dynamics (for certain air bearing designs) that is also associated with noticeably lower lubricant distribution (compared to the light contact case), and the greatest lubricant changes are observed only at the onset and the end of contact. This paper reveals the complex nature of slider-lubricant interactions under near-contact and contact conditions, and it highlights the need for further studies on the topic to help design a HDI for recording architectures of the future.     

Smear growth on head slider surface from siloxane outgas on heat assisted magnetic recording

Microsystem Technologies - In this study, the smear by the lubricant and siloxane pickup at the laser heating in the heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) was evaluated using our developed...     

Dynamics simulation of MEMS device embedded hard disk drive systems

Currently, hard disk drives (HDD) use rotating disks to store digital data and magnetic recording heads are flying on the disk to read/write data. The recording heads are mounted on a slider–suspension assembly, which makes heads move from one track to another on the disk. The heads movement is controlled by close-loop feedback servo systems. It is well known that dynamic behaviors of head–slider–suspension-assembly (HSA) systems are of great influence on the track per inch capacity of HDD [1, 2]. As the problem is structurally complex, it is usually investigated using experimental methods or finite element simulation models [3]. Furthermore, the dual-stage servo system has been commonly considered as one promising solution to increase the servo bandwidth of the recording positioning system for high TPI HDDS. In particular, MEMS device embedded systems are superior to others in batch-fabrication. However, this dual-stage system has also resulted in more difficulties in predicting HDD dynamic performance. This paper presents the study of the problem using the macromodeling simulation approach. It applies efficient FEM based sub-structuring syntheses (SSS) [4] and fast boundary element method (BEM) approaches incorporated with system dynamics technology to investigate the dynamic characteristics of MEMS actuator embedded HSA systems for HDD.This research is funded by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research of Singapore, Strategic Research Program. Also, the authors would like to thanks Miss Jia Wenhui, who is a Research Student with ECE Department at National University of Singapore, Mr. Lim Boon Buan, the former research engineer with Data Storage Institute, for the MEMS actuator modeling and analytical work.     

A novel methodology for quantitative evaluation of scratch-induced magnetic damage in perpendicular magnetic recording disks

We proposed a methodology for determining the demagnetization effect (magnetic damage) created by scratches on the surface of the perpendicular magnetic recording disks of a hard disk drives (HDDs). Scratches, which may occur on the disk??s surface during head and disk contact, result in read and write errors on the HDD. Investigating the amount of magnetic damage is thus an important issue. In this study, the scratched area composed of scratches having a fine pitch and shallow depth were generated, and Kerr loop measurements on the normal and scratched area were conducted. Magnetic damage was then estimated from the difference of Kerr loops. By comparing the results of the proposed methodology with the results of a previous methodology using a magnetic force microscopy, it was confirmed that the proposed methodology can be used to quantitatively evaluate scratch-induced magnetic damage.     

Transient dynamic analysis of ferro-fluid bearing spindle motor

 With areal recording density of hard disk drives (HDD) historically growing at an average of 60% per year and fast spindle speed to continue to reduce access time, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain the precise positioning required of the GMR heads to read and write data. Any unexpected vibration will cause the data written to a wrong data track. Consequently, the dynamic behaviors of HDD spindle systems and their potential influences on track misregistration are key issues in disk drive design. With rapid advances in the emerging consumer device market, the fluid bearing spindle motors, which have low NRRO, low acoustic noise and high damping, are being developed as next generation spindles. This paper is to study transient dynamic performance of HDD ferro-fluid bearing spindle systems. The FEA based component mode synthesis method is used to reduce the overall spindle system dimensions. The effect of the unbalanced magnetic pulls (UMP) due to two different types of motor configurations (balanced and unbalanced configurations) on the dynamic behaviors of spindle system was investigated. The simulated results show that the motor with balanced configuration provides better spindle dynamic performance due to absence of UMP. The UMP derived from the unbalanced configuration can result in some frequency resonance interactions and adversely affect the HDD servo-tracking system. Received: 5 July 2001/Accepted: 17 October 2001     

Thermal analysis of helium-filled enterprise disk drive

Enterprise hard disk drives (HDDs) are widely used in high-end storage systems for data center. One of key performance requirements for enterprise HDDs is data access rate, which demands very high rotational speed (e.g. 15 k rpm or more) to permit fast access time. To reach such high speed, the disk spindle motor draws more power to spin and hence the temperature of HDD enclosure increases due to large windage loss. It has been known, temperature rise is one of the most fundamental factors that affect the reliability of the disk drive. In order to develop high reliable enterprise HDDs, thermal management of enterprise HDDs needs to be optimized to improve heat dissipation. One possible approach is to fill disk drive with helium because of its lower density and higher thermal conductivity. This paper investigates thermal performances of helium-filled enterprise disk drives through FEM simulations with experimental validations. Windage loss and heat convection of the HDD filled with helium and air are analysed. The simulated and measured temperature distributions of one commercial enterprise HDD with helium-filled and helium-air mixture are compared with those of an air-filled one. The results show 41% reduction of temperature rise of HDD enclosure can be achieved by filling with helium in comparison with that of air-filled HDD. It is also projected that in terms of equivalent cooling capability like air-filled HDD at 15 k rpm, helium-filled HDD spindle can spin up to 19 k rpm, which will greatly increase data access rate by 25% for future enterprise applications.     

Linear actuator for precise track following

A new air bearing linear actuator with a Voice Coil Motor (VCM) was investigated for a precise head track following in an Hard Disk Drive (HDD) magnetic recording tester system. The actuator has a servo bandwidth of two times as wide as that of a conventional HDD, due to a high stiffness without any friction. A low-pass filter was introduced to precisely monitor the step response behavior by reducing the relatively large noise of the used optical fiber sensor. The effect of the low-pass filter was investigated comparing with the other method. Track following accuracy was also tested by using a conventional 2.5-inch hard disk drive. The head installed on the actuator could follow on a track by using Position Error Signal (PES) from the servo pattern. When a Double Metal In Gap (D-MIG) head of 4 μm track-width was loaded on a disk rotating at 4200rpm, the tracking error could be compressed down to one-twentieth of the track-width. The tested system did not show any azimuth error of head-tracking due to the linear motion. In conclusion, the air-bearing linear actuator is suitable for a precise track following mechanism of a spin-stand tester for an HDD system.     

TOF-SIMS analysis of perfluoropolyether lubricant smear transferred from disk surface following laser heating

Microsystem Technologies - The structural and molecular weight changes of perfluoropolyether lubricant picked up following laser heating in heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) were analyzed...     

Development and optimal design of a HDD spindle motor with pulling magnet to reduce electrical loss

A conventional hard disk drive (HDD) spindle motor has a pulling plate to generate the axial magnetic force. However, the pulling plate consumes significant amount of iron loss due to the alternating magnetic field on the pulling plate. We propose the new design of a HDD spindle motor with pulling magnet to generate the pre-load as well as to eliminate the iron loss of the pulling plate. We also develop an optimal design methodology to minimize iron and copper losses from the spindle motor of a computer HDD while maintaining the same level of torque ripple and pulling force. The new design is optimized by the developed optimal design methodology. A metamodel is constructed from the three-dimensional finite element analysis of the magnetic field and the meta-modeling techniques, and the accuracies of the metamodels are discussed. The proposed optimal design problem is solved by the progressive quadratic approximation method. The proposed design reduces the electrical loss of the HDD spindle motor by 30.42?% while maintaining the same level of torque ripple and pulling force.     

Topology design to improve HDD suspension dynamic characteristics

In this paper, topology optimization in design of suspensions for high-density magnetic recording systems is studied. With the development of higher data density and the faster data streaming, a hard-disk drive (HDD) is required to move faster with greater positioning accuracy. At this situation, even small mechanical vibration induced by seeking motion may result in error in data reading. According to the operational characteristics of HDD suspension, the present work is focused on the topology design of HDD suspension for the dynamic shock response problem. As a result of this research, several new topological structures of HDD suspension are obtained, which are largely different from previous work, and dynamic response under shock force and stability of passive structure are also improved.     

Analysis of contact phenomena between a head stack assembly and disk during operational shock

A hard disk drive (HDD) is very sensitive to shock. Increasing portability demands have led to increased HDD exposure to unexpected shocks. Therefore, the dynamic characteristics of an HDD were utilized to investigate the relative behavior of the disk and head stack assembly (HSA) during operational shock. A finite element model of HDD was constructed to simulate operational shock. This model included the spindle system, base, HSA, and disk. The relative behavior of the disk and HSA was analyzed using different bases with different stiffness. A drop test was performed to verify the simulation results. A modified base design was then proposed to protect against contact between the disk and HSA in HDD.