Experimentally observed roughness effects on the air bearing in the pseudo-contact spacing regime

Author

Donovan, Mark J. ; Bogy, D.B.

Author_Institution

Comput. Mechanics Lab., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

31

Issue

6

fYear

1995

fDate

11/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2994

Lastpage

2996

Abstract

Recently, sliders with fly heights less than the mean free path of an air molecule have begun to appear in commercial drives. In this near-contact regime, the surface roughness heights of the slider and disk are of the same order as the spacing. Previous numerical and experimental results indicate that surface roughness could significantly effect the fly height in this regime. A new laser interferometer system developed by CML was used to experimentally measure the spacing between an IBM 63% tri-rail slider and disks with different surface roughnesses. Two effects due to disk surface roughness were found: higher fly heights were obtained for smoother disks, and an instability in the air-bearing was observed at low speeds on an ultra-smooth disk

Keywords

hard discs; light interferometry; magnetic film stores; magnetic heads; magnetic recording; spatial variables measurement; surface topography; IBM 63% tri-rail slider; air bearing; air-bearing instability; disk surface roughness; hard disk drive industry; laser interferometer system; low fly height sliders; magnetic head sliders; near-contact regime; pseudo-contact spacing regime; spacing measurement; surface roughness heights; thin film disks; ultra-smooth disk; Drives; Equations; Hard disks; Laboratories; Magnetic films; Magnetic heads; Rough surfaces; Sputtering; Surface emitting lasers; Surface roughness;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.490248

Filename

490248