Flying-Height Adjustment of a Magnetic Head Slider with a Piezoelectric Micro-Actuator

Abstract

The current design of magnetic disk head sliders needs an extra margin of flying height for manufacturing tolerance or environmental variation. To reduce this margin, we have developed an adjustable flying-height slider. This slider carries a piezoelectric micro-actuator and its flying height can be controlled. After simulating the piezoelectric deflection and flying characteristics, we designed an air bearing surface structure for the slider and fabricated it by silicon micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) processing. We solved some fabrication problems left in our previous report and optically observed the slider change its flying height as an electric voltage was applied to the micro-actuator.