Material Transfer From Media to Head in Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR)

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is one of the leading technologies for next generation magnetic recording. Laser heating is utilized in HAMR to achieve magnetic writing of the very high coercivity media. However, the high temperature environment creates several reliability challenges for the head disk interface (HDI). Material transfer within the HDI under HAMR conditions or emulated HAMR conditions has been studied by experiments and simulations. It is found that the material transfer is mainly driven by thermal gradient and mechanical interaction such as head disk contact. In this paper, we designed an experiment to investigate the material transfer from HAMR media to a flying magnetic head. It shows that thermal gradient, more specifically a hotter media and cooler head, is the driving force for the material accumulation on the head. Furthermore, we calibrated the media temperature by a phase change material to identify the critical temperature that triggers the material transfer process. This study is important to understand the smear formation mechanism in HAMR drives.

Investigations of Adhesion under Different Slider-Lube/Disk Contact States at the Head–Disk Interface

Adhesion is the key factor influencing the failure of the hard disk drive operating under ultra-low flying height. In order to mitigate the negative effects of adhesion at the head–disk interface (HDI) and promote further development of the thermal flying height control (TFC) technology, an adhesive contact model based on the Lifshitz theory accounting for the thermal protrusion (TP) geometry of TFC slider, the layered structures of the head and disk, and the operation states of the slider was proposed to investigate the static contact characteristics at the HDI. The simulation results demonstrated the undesirable unstable regions during the transitions between different operation states and the necessity of applying TFC technology. The reduction in the head–media spacing (HMS) was found to be achieved by properly increasing the TP height, decreasing the thickness of the lubricant layer or the thickness of the diamond–like carbon (DLC) layer during the flying state or the TP–lube contact state. At the TP–DLC contact regime, the attractive interaction was stronger than other states, and the strong repulsive interaction made the HMS difficult to be further reduced through the increase in the TP height or the decrease in the lubricant thickness.

A Method to Reduce Head-Disk Interface (HDI) Degradation Risk During Thermal Asperity (TA) Mapping in a Hard Disk Drive

One of the issues in thermal asperity (TA) detection using an embedded contact sensor (ECS) is the degradation caused to the read/write elements of the head while interacting with the TA. We propose a method to reduce such head-disk interaction (HDI) during TA detection and classification by flying higher at low thermal fly-height control (TFC) power, which minimizes the interaction of the TA with the head. The key idea is to scan the head at higher fly height, but with higher ECS bias voltage. Initial experiments have shown that the TA count follows a negative cubic relationship with the backoff at various bias levels, and that it follows a square relationship with bias at various backoff levels. Using a sample set, the calibration curves i.e. the golden relationship between these parameters can be established. Using these, one can start the TA detection at the highest backoff and high ECS bias, and start to estimate the nominal TA count. By mapping out these TAs and ensuring the head does not fly over them again to prevent HDI, the fly height can then be lowered, and the rest of the TA cluster can be scanned. Following this method iteratively, the entire TA cluster can be mapped out with minimal interaction with the head. Although this method entails an increase in the test time to detect and map all TAs, compared to detecting them with TFC being on, this can help improve the reliability of the drive by protecting the sensitive read/write elements especially for energy assisted recording from HDI.

A Method for Characterizing the Head-Disk Interface Dynamics Near the Touchdown Conditions Using the Magnetic Fly-Height

Recent growth in the cloud storage industry has created a massive demand for higher capacity hard disk drives (HDD). A sub-nanometer head media spacing (HMS) remains the most critical pre-requisite to achieve the areal density needed to deliver the next generation of HDD products. Designing a robust head-disk interface (HDI) with small physical clearance requires the understanding of slider dynamics, especially when the head flies in proximity to the disk surface. In this paper, we describe a method using the magnetic read-back signal to characterize the head fly-height modulations as it undergoes a transition from a free-flying state to soft contact with the disk surface. A technique based on the magnetic fly-height sensitivity is introduced for the identification of the transition plane that corresponds to the onset of the touchdown process. Additionally, the proposed magnetic spacing based meteorology is used to study the effect of the air bearing stiffness on the magnitude of the slider vibrations induced by intermittent head-disk interactions. The information about the minimum spacing while maintaining the stable flying conditions can help in reducing the head-disk interaction risk that can enable a low clearance interface.

Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Nanoscale Heat Transfer Between a Flying Head Over a Rotating Disk

With the minimum fly height less than 10 nm in contemporary hard-disk drives, understanding nanoscale heat transfer at the head-disk interface (HDI) is crucial for developing reliable head and media designs. While flying at near-contact, the fly height and spacing dependent nanoscale heat transfer are significantly affected by interfacial forces in the HDI (such as adhesion force, contact force etc.). Moreover, with the emergence of technologies such as Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording and Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording, head failure due to overheating has become an increasing concern. In this study, we present a numerical model to simulate the head temperature profile and the head-disk spacing for a flying head over a spinning disk and compare our results with touchdown experiments performed with a magnetic recording head flying over a rotating Al-Mg disk. In order to accurately predict the fly height and heat transfer at near-contact, we incorporate asperity based adhesion and contact models, air & phonon conduction heat transfer, friction heating and the effect of disk temperature rise in our model. Our results show that the incorporation of adhesion force between the head and the disk causes a reduction in the fly height, leading to a smaller touchdown power than the simulation without adhesion force.

Design And Experimental Investigation Of Single Plate Clutch

The Clutch Disk or plate is a part of the manual transmission system for your vehicle that delivers power from the engine to the transmission. It is mounted b/w the pressure plate & the flywheel. For high performance automobiles it is constructed from highly durable steel or sometimes other material. Performance of Vehicle Clutch plates on pad-to-disk interface touch conditions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact on the friction & wear of Clutch Plate material from different material composition. If we use the composite material the cost instead of the traditional material, weight can be reduced and the life of the brake material can be extended at low cost. In our research, material strength is experimentally investigated to predict compression, tensile & impact testing in both materials (E-glass & Jute fiber) to choose the better material of single plate clutch