Media tribology design to improve flyability at low flying height

Abstract

As the head media separation (HMS) continues to decrease with increasing areal density, maintaining good flyability performance is crucial to ensure the robustness of the head-disk-interface. Carbon wear and lubricant pickup on the slider surface are found to be the main contributors to flyability degradation. The effects of carbon overcoat and lubricant on load/unload flyability were investigated at the near-contact flying height by either reducing the environmental pressure or slowing down the disk rotating speed. Changing lubricant process and X-1P additive amount can affect lubricant pickup. In order to reduce the head wear, a thin layer of softer functional carbon layer was applied on the top of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition carbon. However, carbon and lubricant modification has some limitations on improving flyability as HMS continues to drop. As an alternative approach to minimizing slider pickup at low flying height, landing the head in the laser textured contact-start-stop zone serves the function of cleaning the head and removing head smear.