Properties of one-sided probe heads on double-layer perpendicular recording media

The perpendicular recording mode is still a candidate for obtaining higher densities. Best recording results on a double-layer (DL) medium must be expected from using a probe head (PH). This contribution provides an analysis of the write-read performance of one-sided PHs that do not use an auxiliary pole on the back of the medium. Analytical as well as numerical models were used to calculate the effects of saturation and medium thickness on the write fields. Experimental verification of the modeling results was obtained by measuring the wavelength response of many W-shaped PHs on DL media. Combining this with the calculated response, we obtained a semi-empirical relation between the pole nulls, pole thickness and the pole-to-backlayer distance. It reveals a PH behaviour very different from a ring head (RH). The pole thickness calculated from the measured pole-null wavelengths showed a very close agreement with the optically determined value. The calculated head efficiencies are very small, as was confirmed experimentally, and need improvement before the PH has an output comparable with a RH.