Experimental study of slider–disk interaction process with thermal-flying-height controlled slider

Abstract

Thermal flying height (TFC) controlled slider has been introduced in hard disk drive recently. Flying height at the read/write elements of the slider is controlled by thermal pole tip protrusion. Interactions between the TFC slider and disk can be very gentle because the low flying height thermal protrusion area is usually very small. It is still a big challenge to detect very gentle interactions. In this work, a very sensitive method to study very gentle slider–disk interaction in frequency domain has been developed and details of the TFC slider–disk interactions from gentle to strong have been revealed. It is proved that higher heating power is required to initiate the vibration in which higher stiffness part of the slider air-bearing is involved.