Development of a new sub-sub micron flying ramp-loading head with emphasis on slider roll control capability

The authors propose a novel head/disk interface mechanism in which a head flies over ultrasmooth, nontextured disks. A novel ramp loading head designed with an emphasis on its slider roll control capability has been developed to increase reliability during load-unload operations. Improved slider roll characteristics, a key parameter for reliable load-unload under sub-sub-micron head/disk spacing were first predicted by numerical analysis, and experimentally confirmed by slider roll measurements during loading operations. Head/disk contact, which degrades head/disk interface reliability, was never detected in AE measurements. After a 10000 cycle load-unload test of this ramp loading head over a polished thin-film disk, no damage to the read/write transducer was observed in read/write evaluations. Experimentally and numerically derived results indicate the mechanism to be suitable for a sub-sub-micron recording interface