Thermo-resistive flight attitude measurements of flying heads in near-field magnetooptical data storage

The development of an optical recording system which is based on the flying head technology requires to determine the head´s dynamic flight behavior. To do so, a thermo-resistive test head was created. It uses thermo-resistors embedded in the air-bearing surface (ABS). Joule heating by the sensing current generates a heat flow across the head-disk spacing which highly depends on the distance between ABS and disk. Due to the thermal sensors located on each of the four corners of a slider, pitch, roll, and flying height variations may be measured.