Tribology of contacting head-disk interfaces
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abstract
An experimental study is presented on the tribological performance and reliability of head-disk contacting interfaces. Standard negative pressure, tri-pad pico sliders and several media with different roughness were used. On-track flyability experiments under interference contact conditions were carried out on the various interfaces selected for evaluation. In all cases a rotational speed of 10,000 RPM was used. Ambient pressure reduction was the means chosen to decrease head-disk spacing (i.e., the flying height) until head-disk contact occurred. It was found that conventional head-disk combinations, which are typically super-smooth, couldn't survive continuous contact conditions. A slider design concept involving the micro texturing of air bearing surfaces is presented. This novel design could lead to the effective mitigation of the adverse effects of head-disk contact on the durability of contacting head-disk interfaces.