Study of Piezoelectric ZnO Thin Films for Contact Sensing and Head Actuation

To realize higher areal densities towards 10 Tb/in² in hard disk drives, the flying height between slider and disk needs to decrease to the near-contact region. It is essential to monitor head-disk interactions to prevent instability and damage from occuring on the head-disk interface. This paper presents deposition and characterization of zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films for smart sliders. ZnO thin films with different c-axis orientations and sputtering durations were prepared using RF magnetron sputtering and their physical properties were measured by scanning electron microscopy. A piezoelectric ZnO sensor array was fabricated using fabrication techniques compatible with standard slider micromachining process. The simulation results indicated the sensor array was capable of detecting different contact locations.