Study of head-disk interference at low-flying height

As the head-disk clearance is reduced to 10 nm or less, maintaining good flyability performance is crucial to ensure the robustness of the head-disk-interface. In this paper, the head mechanical degradation, which includes both lubricant pickup and head wear, is studied as the flying height approaches zero. Three different flying regimes are observed as the flying height is reduced: good flyability regime, lubricant pickup regime, and near contact regime. To minimize the lubricant smears on flying heads, the effect of the lubricant bonded ratio was investigated, and it was found that the lubricant pickup on the head is reduced with less amount of free lubricant on the disk surface.