Investigation of Flying-Height Stability of Thermal Fly-Height Control Sliders in Lubricant or Solid Contact with Roughness

When the magnetic spacing in hard disk drives is reduced to sub-3 nm, contact between the slider and disk becomes inevitable. Stability analysis is used in this study to investigate the head-disk interface (HDI) stability of thermal fly-height control (TFC) sliders in light contact with the disk lub...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tribology letters 2010-06, Vol.38 (3), p.283-289
Main Authors: Zheng, Jinglin, Bogy, David B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bearing design
Boundary lubrication
Chemistry and Materials Science
Control stability
Corrosion and Coatings
Critical point
Disk drives
Gas bearings
Head-disc interface
Head-disk interface
Instability
Interface stability
Interfacial forces
Lubricants
Lubricants & lubrication
Lubrication
Magnetic recording
Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Original Paper
Physical Chemistry
Roughness
Slopes
Stability analysis
Surfaces and Interfaces
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Thermal flying-height control
Thin Films
Tribology
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Summary:When the magnetic spacing in hard disk drives is reduced to sub-3 nm, contact between the slider and disk becomes inevitable. Stability analysis is used in this study to investigate the head-disk interface (HDI) stability of thermal fly-height control (TFC) sliders in light contact with the disk lubricant or solid roughness. We implement an improved DMT model with sub-boundary lubrication into the CML air bearing program and analyze the stability of equilibrium states of a TFC slider under different thermal actuations. It is found that stability is lost when the slider penetrates deeper into the lubricant layer, due to a fast growth in the adhesion force, and it is restored when the solid roughness contact develops. In addition, the critical point for the onset of this instability and the range of this instability region is found to vary with lubricant thickness and protrusion surface steepness, while keeping the air bearing design the same.
ISSN:1023-8883
1573-2711
DOI:10.1007/s11249-010-9607-3