Thermal flying-height control sliders in hard disk drives filled with air-helium gas mixtures

Abstract

This letter employs established approaches to calculate the physical properties of the air-helium gas mixtures and investigates the thermal flying-height control slider’s flying performance in these environments. It is found that at a fixed heater power, the slider’s flying height first increases and then decreases with the fraction of helium in the gas mixture due to the combined effects of changes in the mean free path, viscosity, and thermal conductivity of the gas mixture with helium content. These findings, together with the proposed approach, are useful for future designs of sliders in air-helium mixtures.