Functional Collapse of Designed Surface Texture for Stiction Prevention in Storage Disk Drives

Laser texture is widely used to prevent stiction in the head disk interface. The stiction protection depends on the effective height of the laser texture. The balance between the meniscus and mechanical deformation forces is described when lubricant migrates into the head disk interface. When the elastic deformation forces cannot balance the meniscus force, the laser texture bumps collapse and the protection against stiction is lost. A critical bump height is defined. Bump collapse is experimentally demonstrated by monitoring the capacitance between head and disk when lubricant migrates from the trailing edge of a slider into the head disk interface. An interface with high bumps shows a small capacitance increase since the mechanical deformation forces can balance the meniscus forces with only small bump compression. Consistent with a calculated capacitance increase under bump collapse, an interface with low bumps shows a large capacitance increase.     

Resonance phenomenon and its effects of laser texture disk

To achieve lower flying height for high areal recording density, the laser zone texturing of the disk needs to be designed to reduce glide height. One problem of the laser bump design is that the regular laser bump pattern often produces glide resonance phenomenon, which leads to failure of the glide height test. However, it was found in this study that glide resonance is an intrinsic problem of the glide head used and resonance phenomenon depends on the type of the head slider, that is, the natural frequency of the slider body. Therefore, higher glide height or glide failure caused by glide resonance does not lead to head/media interface problem in the real drive operating conditions in which the data head is used. Pseudo- random bump pattern greatly reduces the glide resonance. Smaller bump pitch will also help to reduce the glide resonance. However, as bump spacing becomes smaller, glide height will be increased due to increased air pressure developed around the bumps. Lowering bump height is the most effect way to reduce glide avalanche.     

Experimental investigation of AE and friction signals related to the durability of head/disk interface

The durability of a hard disk drive is one of the most critical issues that must be optimized for best performance. Especially as the flying height of the head slider of a hard disk drive decreases over the years, the concern for surface damage and head contamination continues to grow. In this paper the characteristics of AE and friction signals for various operating conditions using CSS and drag tests were investigated from the durability point of view. Also, the wear characteristics of the laser bumps on a magnetic disk were compared between the CSS and drag tests. The general shapes of the AE and friction signals during a single CSS test were quite similar even under less than ideal operating conditions. However, it was found that the AE signal was more sensitive than the friction signal in assessing the damage of the slider/disk interface. Finally, a correlation was established between the CSS and drag testing methods with respect to the laser bump wear. This outcome suggests that the drag test may be used to accelerate the surface damage effect of head/disk system.     

Effect of peak radius on design of W-type donut shaped laser textured surfaces

Friction/stiction behavior of ultra high density magnetic disk drives can be controlled by controlling the size and shape of the laser bumps using a laser texturing tool. Different laser bump parameters like rim radius, rim height, peak radius and number of bumps (under the slider) play an important role in the design of laser textured disk surfaces. In the present study, an algorithm is developed for generation of W-type laser bumps on the computer. W-type laser surfaces with a Gaussian height distribution have been generated and contact analyses of these surfaces have been carried out. Design curves have been generated to calculate critical number of asperities required to minimize wear and stiction. Effect of the coefficient of friction on the number of bumps has also been studied.     

Experimental and theoretical evaluation of friction at contacting magnetic storage slider–disk interfaces

To understand better the friction force and wear processes at contacting slider–disk interfaces, we have developed an experimental method for measuring and a theoretical method for calculating the friction force. For this study, a slider with a 1500 μm² contact pad located at the recording head is burnished against a relatively rough disk (～12 Å rms), which ensures smooth sliding. In the experimental method, the friction force is measured as the disk is spun-down to bring the slider–disk interface into an increasing degree of contact. A modified air bearing code is used to determine the experimental normal contact force for each friction measurement. In the theoretical method, the friction force and other relevant interfacial forces are calculated using an improved sub-boundary lubrication (ISBL) rough surface model. The friction force calculation in this model is based on the force needed to induce yielding of the individual disk asperities contacting the flat surface of the contact pad without any assumption of the coefficient of friction. Good agreement is found between the measured and theoretical friction vs. normal contact force curves, indicating that the model is capturing the essential origins of friction at this interface. The model also provides valuable insights into how wear particles may be generated at this contacting slider–disk interface.     

The effects of texture height and thickness of amorphous carbon nitride coating of a hard disk slider on the friction and wear of the slider against a disk

In order to minimize the stiction force caused by contact of the extremely smooth surfaces of head sliders and disks in hard disk drives, texture is usually applied on the disk surface. For future contact/near-contact recording, the stiction-induced high friction between slider and disk will become a problem. Texture on the slider/disk interface will still be an expected method to reduce friction. Recently, it was suggested to texture the slider surface. A protective coating is usually required on the textured slider surface to reduce wear of the texture. The results showed that texture on the slider surface was effective in reducing the friction between head sliders and disks. On the other hand, the texture and coating on the slider surface increase the spacing between the read/write element and the magnetic layer of the disk. The necessary and effective texture height and coating thickness are still not clear. In the present research, island-type textures with different heights (3–18 mn) were formed on slider surfaces by ion-beam etching. Amorphous carbon nitride (a-CN_x) coatings of different thicknesses (0–50 nm) were coated on the textured slider surfaces as a protective overcoat. The friction and wear properties of these sliders were evaluated by constant-speed drag tests against hard disks coated with diamond-like carbon (DLC). The results show that 2 nm texture on a slider surface is sufficient for low (0.3–0.5) and stable friction of the slider against the disk in a drag test, and coatings thicker than 5 nm show similar wear resistances of the texture on slider surfaces.     

Experimental and direct numerical analysis of hard-disk drive

The purpose of this paper is to study methods for enhancing the reliability and performance of hard-disk drives (HDD) because it is essential for improving recording density, speed of data access, and output signal. This study also investigates various techniques that can be used for head/disk contact detection. The acoustic emission (AE) and friction signal characteristics were observed with respect to the durability of the head/disk interface (HDI) under various operating conditions using a contact start-stop (CSS) test. In addition, to study the influence of surface topography on the stiction performance of the HDI, a modified and polished laser pump was proposed and CSS investigations were accomplished. Moreover, the static and dynamic properties of an HDD air slider were studied using a finite element method (FEM).     

Laplace pressure measurement on laser textured thin-film disk

To increase the recording density of hard disk drives (HDD), head and disk surfaces must be very flat. This will make the friction between them large when liquid bridges are formed. This is a result of Laplace pressure in the liquid bridge. Therefore, the study of Laplace pressure in real HDD interface is of an interest for head-disk interface engineers. However, Laplace pressure of perfluoropolyether (PFPE) lubricant on carbon coated thin-film disk surface was not clear until now.We measured Laplace pressure between transparent flat pins and carbon coated thin-film disks with laser texturing. Using laser textured disks, we could control the distance between two surfaces precisely by the bump height. The friction coefficient between the pin and the disk surfaces was determined when the interface was fully wet by liquids. It was 0.16 and 0.1 for water and a PFPE lubricant. The Laplace pressure was then calculated using the friction force and liquid wet area when the interface was partially wet by a liquid. The liquid wet area was measured by the observation of the contact point through the transparent pins.The results showed that the Laplace pressure at the lowest bump height (11 nm) was about 2.8 MPa for the PFPE lubricant. Results agreed well with calculated curves. We consider that PFPE acts as liquid down to 11 nm.     

Tribology applications of surface reflectance analyzers: optical characterization of the head disk interface

In this paper, we will discuss Surface Reflectance Analyzers (SRA) and their applications in tribology. We will show how the SRA instrument can be used to locate and quantify tribological parameters, such as carbon wear and lubricant buildup, at the head/disk interface. This damage can be caused by a variety of head/disk interactions. In one case, we will demonstrate the importance of slider crown on tribological performance by quantitatively comparing the damage to the disk surface during continuous start–stop test in the laser texture zone. In another case we will demonstrate the importance of slider air bearing design in ramp load/unload tests by quantitatively comparing the amount of damage near the OD of the disk. Ramp load/unload damage manifests itself in various forms. In addition to local carbon wear and lubricant effects, there is also debris from the ramp wear and occasional “dings”. We will show how the SRA system can be used to distinguish and quantify these various types of damage.     

Slider–bump contact and flying height calibration

It is a big challenge to determine ultra-low slider flying height accurately. The standard bump disk method is probably the most reliable and acceptable method so far. One of the key issues to determine slider-flying height with the bump disk method is the complicated slider–bump interaction process and the possible disturbance of the bumps on the slider flying performance. Our knowledge about the slider–bump interaction process is still very limited due to the lack of an effective and powerful experimental technique to study it. In this work, the slider–bump interaction process was studied with a dynamic flying height-attitude (3D) system. The interaction process was also simulated to compare with the experimental observations and to help determine the slider–bump contact points in the experimental observations. The accuracy of flying height (FH) calibration with the bump disk method and the minimum slider–bump interference height required for the testing system used in this study to detect the onset of slider–bump contact were analyzed and discussed. It is proved that the 3D system is a very useful and powerful tool for the application. Many details of the slider–bump interaction process can be revealed with the 3D system. It is found that the calibrated FH is much more accurate than that predicated by the simulations.     

A novel textured design for hard disk tribology improvement

A novel textured design with characteristics of low glide avalanche, low stiction and long wear durability has been studied. The novel textured design contains a normal laser process and mechanical texture process. The first step was to create the conventional crater circular laser bump, the second step was to modify the bump shape using different sizes of texture slurry. The mechanical texture consists of three-stage process from grinding bump rim to flatting bump rim. This novel bump design has large volume and small curvature of bump rim to minimize the level of impact between head and disk. The new design also has high roughness of bump rims to reduce the contact area of interface, and the grooves of the texture line on the bump rim providing paths to improve the reflow of lube. We have shown that the new design has the lower stiction, longer wear durability, less lube degradation and carbon overcoat wear, less probability of tipping occurrence and lower glide avalanche than that of the conventional design.     

高密磁记录系统的动力学分析

讨论多聚酯流体润滑的IBM3370磁头/磁盘系统,以期提高磁记录密度。润滑模型中考虑超薄流体润滑的剪薄效应,并用有限差分法对润滑方程进行求解,应用摄动理论建立IBM3370磁头/磁盘系统的动力学模型,分别对气体润滑和液体润滑的2自由度磁头的动力响应进行仿真。仿真结果表明,液膜润滑的磁头飞浮高度在20nm时,磁头仍能保持较好的稳定性。     

Ultra-low-flying-height design from the viewpoint of contact vibration

The design of a head-disk interface for ultra-low flying height has been studied from the viewpoint of contact vibration. It is known that a super-smooth disk is necessary for a slider to fly at an ultra-low flying height; however, such a disk increases the friction force, which potentially increases the vibration of the slider. To solve this problem, the head-disk interface must be optimized to reduce this increased vibration. It has been shown that a large pitch angle and center-pad-mounted read/write elements have advantages in terms of slider/disk contact. It has also been found that a micro-texture on the air bearing surface can prevent contact vibration. Moreover, a frequency-shift-damping slider was found to damp the vibration effectively. To further investigate these findings, numerical simulation and modeling of slider dynamics during contact have been performed. Their results revealed two zones of contact vibration: a stable zone and an unstable zone.     

Analysis of Surface Textured Air Bearing Sliders with Rarefaction Effects

A numerical model is developed to study the effect of texture on air bearing sliders for large Knudsen numbers. The effect of texture location, texture size, and density on the pressure generation is studied. First, a textured plane slider parallel to the disk surface is investigated, and the texture parameters are determined that result in optimum pressure generation. Then, a plane inclined slider is studied using optimum texture parameters found in the parallel slider case. Thereafter, the effect of texture on the steady state flying characteristics of an actual magnetic recording slider is investigated. Finally, the flying height modulation, pitch, and roll motion of a textured slider (pico and femto form factors) are determined numerically by exciting the slider using a step on the disk. Comparison of the results for textured and untextured sliders is made. It is found that textured sliders show better dynamic performance compared to the untextured sliders in terms of stiffness and damping.     

Adhesion and Friction Evaluation of Textured Slider Surfaces in Ultra-Low Flying Head-Disk Interfaces

To achieve extremely high-density magnetic recording of 1Tbit per square inch using conventional technologies, the distance between the recording slider and the rotating disk needs to be less than 5nm. For successful operation, disk and slider surfaces must also be extremely smooth with root-mean-square roughness values of few angstroms. However, ultra-low flying super smooth head-disk interfaces may be exposed to a significant amount of intermittent contact, adhesion, stiction and friction that can cause the interface to collapse. In order to circumvent such problems, many novel techniques have been proposed, such as laser zone texturing, contact pads and surface microtexturing. A reliable method to reduce adhesion and friction in ultra-low flying head-disk interfaces is to control the area of contact and roughen the interface, which allows the slider to fly at sub-5nm with minimal contact. A technique known as preferential texturing provides a unique roughening of the air-bearing surface, where parts of the surface are removed, i.e., subtractive texturing process. In this paper, the effect of preferential texturing (roughening) of slider air-bearing surfaces on the adhesion and friction forces are investigated using quasi-dynamic models. The simulation results show that surface texturing reduces adhesion and friction by reducing the effective area of contact between the slider and media surfaces and by preferentially roughening the interface. The simulation results of friction compare favorably with experimental data.     

Dynamics of transient events at the head/disk interface

Slider/disk contacts of nano and pico sliders are investigated using an acoustic emission sensor and a high bandwidth laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). The following cases are studied: (a) influence of scratch impact on the airbearing stiffness; (b) influence of lubricant thickness on slider dynamics for single bump impacts; (c) influence of lubricant thickness on slider vertical stick–slip vibrations; (d) dynamics of take-off and landing. Linear time frequency analysis is applied to study simultaneously the impact response of the airbearing and the slider torsional and bending modes. The contact dynamics of single bump impacts is examined as a function of disk velocity and lubricant thickness. Increased slider vibrations are found for thick lubricant films both for sliding contacts as well as for single bump impacts. During the transition from sliding to flying a change of the bending mode frequency is observed.     

Dynamics in the Bridged State of a Magnetic Recording Slider

A novel region of tribological interaction is explored by inducing near contact between the magnetic recording slider and disk. In this study, we performed frictional measurements over a wide range of subambient air pressure and disk rotation rate. Since the slider is supported over the disk by an air bearing, it has been found that cycling from ambient to subambient and then back up to ambient pressure over several minutes of time forms a frictional hysteresis loop. The high-friction branch of the loop, referred to as the bridged state, is characterized by an average frictional displacement and resonant vibration of the suspension mount assembly. The bridged state is currently employed for accelerated wear testing of magnetic slider/disk/lubricant systems. Future magnetic recording systems designed to operate at increasingly lower physical spacing will need to take into account these frictional forces which accompany the incipient contact between the lubricated disk and slider with finite surface roughness. A single degree of freedom model is solved to determine the equivalent dynamic friction force on the slider as an impulse series with random impulse frequency and amplitude from the measured frictional displacement in the bridged state. The mean slider-disk spacing in the bridged state is derived from the experimental friction force, the spacing probability density function, and the adhesion stress from the Lifshitz model for dispersion interaction energy.     

Acoustic emission studies of thin film rigid disks and proximity recording sliders and its applications to tribology

This work investigates the flying and contact phenomena of proximity contact recording sliders and their effects on the tribological performance of thin film media by the use of acoustic emission analysis. Proximity contact recording sliders included negative pressure and tri‐rail types of tripad sliders. Mechanical and laser‐induced textured magnetic rigid disks were used in this study. The laser bump heights of laser textured disks were controlled to achieve a desired tribological performance and the relationship between the laser bump heights and acoustic emission energy during drag and start/stop testing for different slider designs was studied. Emphasis was also placed on identifying the critical parameters of media and slider designs for tribological performance improvement. An analysis of the slider body natural frequencies during flying at the operational speed has been demonstrated to be well correlated to the contact behavior at the head‐disk interface. Moreover, the environmental and lubrication effects on the fixed tracking flyability performance were investigated and the acoustic emission data also agreed fairly well with the observed degree of contamination on sliders and degradation on the textured media. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Thin film hydrodynamic lubrication of flying heads in magnetic disk storages

Typical hydrodynamic lubrication problems commonly encountered in the ultrathin spacing between a computer flying head and a magnetic disk are reviewed. In magnetic disk storages, minimizing the spacing between the head and disk is essential to promote the largest possible increase in magnetic bit density. In the small (nearly 1.0 μm) spacing that has recently been attained, the rarefaction effects owing to the molecular mean free path become dominant. Specifically, in this paper the three governing equations resulting from the first- and second-order slip-flow models and from the linearized Boltzmann equation are compared. Next, some numerical approaches to eliminating the instability in pressure distribution in the high bearing number region are described. Surface roughness effects are also a principal concern in thin spacing. A mixed lubrication model which enables the analysis of the start/stop operation and the average film thickness theory for one- and two-dimensional roughnesses is summarized. Finally, from the viewpoint of practical head design, the slider dynamic characteristics and related slider design factors are discussed.     

Identification of the Spectrum Signature of Air-Bearing Slider Dynamics

Characterization of the motion of air-bearing slider with sub-10-nm clearance is becoming a critical aspect of developing advanced head–disk interfaces (HDI) in hard disk drives to achieve higher areal data densities. In this article, the response of sub-10-nm clearance air-bearing slider induced by a bump contact is recorded using laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). To identify system dynamics in terms of spectral decomposition, the slider response is studied using FFT, power spectrum density, spectrogram, and Hilbert instantaneous spectrum analysis. The results demonstrate that the response of air-bearing slider in instantaneous contact exhibits nonstationary and nonlinear properties which can be accurately identified using Hilbert instantaneous spectrum. The interpretation and spectrum identification based on Fourier analysis and its extension in time–frequency domain could lead to inaccurate results due to their limitation in resolution and linearity assumption.