Title: Study of Head/Disk Interface for Discrete Track Recording Media

Researcher: Aravind Murthy

Advisor: Prof. Frank Talke

Textured magnetic recording sliders

Surface texture has been widely used in the head disk interface (HDI) over many years to improve the tribological performance of the interface by reducing stiction and friction. We have developed a numerical model to study the effect of texture on rarefied gas flow in air bearing sliders. Surface texture is applied numerically by creating spherical indentations on the air bearing surface. From this model we can obtain optimum texture design parameters such as the texture density, texture location, and texture aspect ratios by evaluating the pressure generation for the air bearing. Then, in the second part of the study, we use the optimum texture design parameters to obtain the flying characteristics of an actual magnetic recording slider.

Patterned magnetic recording sliders

The use of patterned media is a new approach proposed to extend the recording densities of hard disk drives beyond 1 Tb/inc 2 . Patterned media overcomes the thermal stability problems of conventional media by using single-domain islands for each bit of recorded information. In order to simplify the problem, we have transferred the pattern from the disk surface (Bit Patterned Media) onto the slider surface and have investigated the steady state pressure generation due to the bit pattern. Cylindrical protrusions are modeled on the slider air bearing surface to create uniform patterns. Numerical simulation techniques are used to push the mesh size to very small values on the order of nanometers and obtain the flying characteristics for slider air bearing surface (ABS). Currently, we are investigating the time-dependent flying characteristics for the head disk interface due to moving patterns.