Development of Multi-Layered Composite PZT Thin Films for Active Sliders in Hard Disk Drives

Abstract

This paper describes the development of novel PZT thin films for active sliders in hard disk drives. So far, it is common that single-layered thin films are used as micro-actuators for conventional PZT thin films such as sol-gel or sputtered thin films. In this study, however, the novel composite PZT thin films are developed. The feature is that sol-gel PZT thin film is deposited on sputtered PZT thin film fabricated on Pt/Ti bottom electrode. These multilayered composite PZT thin films are found to have the higher (111) preferred orientation as well as better P-E hysteresis loop characteristics than not only sol-gel PZT thin films but also sputtered PZT thin films. Furthermore, the piezoelectric strain constant d31 for the novel PZT thin films is identified to be 189 × 10−12m/V. This value is 2.0 times higher than that for conventional PZT thin films and it is found that the novel PZT thin films have good piezoelectric properties.