Improved Analysis of Unstable Bouncing Vibration and Stabilizing Design of Flying Head Slider in Near-Contact Region

Abstract

This paper describes an improved analytical study of the bouncing vibration of a flying head slider in the near-contact region and gives quantitative designs guideline for realizing a stable flying head slider, based on the results of a parametric study. First, we numerically calculated the general characteristics of the contact and adhesion forces between a smooth contact pad and disk surface by considering asperity contact, the lubricant meniscus, and elastic bulk deformation. As a result, it was shown that the contact characteristics can be represented by a simple model with five independent parameters when the asperity density is large and the asperity height is small as in cases of current slider and disk surfaces. Then, we numerically computed the slider dynamics in a two degree of freedom slider model with nonlinear air-bearing springs by using the simplified contact characteristic model. As a result, we have obtained a self-excited bouncing vibration whose frequency, amplitude and touchdown/takeoff hysteresis characteristics agree much better with the experimental results compared with our previous analysis. From a parametric study for takeoff height, we could obtain design guidelines for realizing a stable head slider in a low flying height of 5nm or less.