Partial-contact head-disk interface approach for high-density recording

A modern hard disk drive (HDD) generally requires a head-disk spacing of less than 10 nm. This paper focuses on studying slider vibration and designed several novel air bearing shapes to prevent slider vibration. An isolated pad slider and a narrow trailing edge slider were designed and fabricated for the feasibility study of the partial-contact interface. From the study, we found out that: 1) a slider with a smaller isolated pad had a smaller off-track vibration; 2) one with a smaller isolated pad had less aggressive disk lubricant depletion; and 3) a narrower trailing edge led to an easy transition from contact to flying.