Development of flying type head/slider for optical recording technology

Flying-type sliders with the integration of optical components were developed for Near-Field Recording (NFR) and Far-Field Recording (FFR) technologies. The key design issue was the integration of the optical components with the slider. Due to the size of the lenses mounted on it, the slider had to be relatively large, corresponding to the size of a micro-slider. Also, the non-uniform distribution of the slider body density was incorporated in the design. As for the optical disk substrate, a plastic material such as polycarbonate was investigated because of its manufacturing convenience and cost effectiveness. The flying and tribological performance of the prototype optical sliders on various media were assessed. The results showed that the tribological characteristics of the slider/disk interface were sensitive to several factors including the properties of the disk. Adequate flying characteristics of the optical sliders on glass (NFR) and plastic (FFR) disks could be attained by optimizing these parameters.