Effect of slider load on the wear debris contamination tendency of head/slider

Head contamination is a serious problem that must be avoided for high reliability. It has been previously reported that the wear debris contamination behavior of head/slider varies as the flying height of the slider is lowered. The emphasis of this paper is on identifying the trend of wear debris contamination on the air bearing surface of a slider due to contact with the disk, The surface damage effect of the slider was accelerated by conducting sliding tests in drag conditions. It was found that for a wide range of effective slider load, the wear debris tend to accumulate near the edges of the air bearing features on the slider surface. As a means to prevent the head from being contaminated by wear debris, the use of a micro-grooved surface is proposed. The effectiveness of micro-grooves on a silicon surface in trapping wear particles is demonstrated. Hence, grooves may be used strategically on the slider air bearing surface to develop contamination-free sliders.