Design and fabrication of MEMS-based active sliders using double-layered composite PZT thin films in hard disk drives

This paper describes MEMS-based active sliders with microactuators. The active sliders that we proposed use PZT thin films as a microactuator and control the slider flying height of less than 10 nm. The design procedure for the active slider is discussed. In addition, novel PZT thin film microactuators are studied, and it is shown that the recently developed PZT thin films have better piezoelectric characteristics than not only conventional sol-gel derived PZT thin films but also sputtered PZT thin films. The micromachining process for the active slider is also developed and the pico-size active slider is fabricated. The technical issues related to the fabrication of MEMS-based active sliders are discussed.