Towards fly- and lubricant-contact recording

Reducing the spacing between the magnetic head and the magnetic media is of crucial importance in enabling future high-density magnetic data storage. The magnetic spacing has been reduced to a level that we have to explore new schemes for the further reduction of the spacing. This paper reports authors’ efforts towards fly- and lubricant-contact recording scheme. The targeted objective is to minimize the mean-plane spacing between the slider and disk surfaces and to allow the further reduction of the overcoat thickness. The slider will still fly over the disk surface. The read/write head part of the slider will be protruded to contact lubricant—to minimize the mean-plane mechanical spacing. The key factors for achieving such a mechanism include super-smooth slider and disk surfaces, advanced slider air-bearing design to significantly reduce flying height modulation caused by disk waviness and flatness, nano-actuator design, position feedback control scheme to control the contact depth, and so on. The preliminary experimental data confirm the feasibility of such a lubricant-contact scheme. The slider air-bearing design presented in this work also indicates the feasibility of high-performance slider design, which can well follow the disk waviness. A parameter, anti-modulation factor, is introduced for the evaluation of slider's performance in reducing flying height modulation caused by disk waviness.