Role of particulate contamination on tribology of padded and load/unload picosliders

The effect of particulate contamination on friction and wear at the head-disk interface (HDI) for load/unload picosliders and contact start stop padded picosliders are studied. Load/unload picosliders performed better than padded picosliders in the presence of particulate contamination. Disk wear was higher for harder and smaller size particles. Disk speed and particle size play a major role in the HDI wear. Loading and unloading of slider does not deteriorate the HDI to an extent to which contact start stop does. Track following causes more and early disk damage as compared to sweeping though the load/unload picoslider which shows better performance. Contamination of the HDI causes wear of pads eventually leading to partial or complete removal of pads.