Simulation of particle trajectory in the head-disk interface

To compete with solid state drives(SSDs), hard disk drives (HDDs) must improve their performance in capacity, speed and reliability, which requires the spacing between the magnetic disk and the magnetic transducer, used to read and write information on the disk, to decrease. which makes the gas between the slider and the disk rarefied. Such small space distance, makes contamination on the air bearing surface(ABS) is important, for a particle entering the air bearings can causes various damages on the surface of slider or the disk, changes magnetic spacing because of particle accumulation on the slider, which makes slider lose its flying stability and crash, more seriously, causing damage to the disk and induce loss of data. Particle motion and adhesion mechanism to the slider surface in the head disk interface (HDI) help us understand the contamination process on a slider, which is critical for achieving higher areal data densities in hard disk drives and will be useful for designing specific slider features to reduce the contamination.