Design of laser zone texture for low glide media

The design of laser zone texture on NiP/Aluminum substrates to create below-25 nm-glide-height media is described in this paper. A range of laser parameters such as beam size, pulse energy, and temporal pulse width of a pulsed Nd-YVO₄ laser are explored to reveal their relationship to the resulting bump topography. Depending on where the head contact is formed, four major categories of bump shapes are found to exist. The single-crater bump shape was selected to conduct the low glide texture design. Stiction and glide performance are shown to be in agreement with theoretical predictions, which constitute our major design guidelines. It is clearly demonstrated that with proper texture design below-25 nm-glide-height media with low stiction and minimal wear are readily achievable even in the landing zone with laser texture