Design and fabrication of MEMS-based active slider using double-layered composite PZT thin film in hard disk drives

Abstract

This paper describes a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS)-based active slider with microactuators. The proposal active slider uses PZT thin films as a microactuator and to control the slider flying height of less than 10 nm. The design procedure for the active slider is discussed. In addition, novel double-layered composite PZT thin film microactuators, which are very important functional microdevices, are studied. It is shown that the recently developed PZT thin films have better piezoelectric characteristics than conventional sol-gel derived PZT thin films and sputtered PZT thin films. The micromachining process for the active slider is also developed and the pico-size active slider is fabricated. The technical issues related to the fabrication of a MEMS-based active slider are discussed.