Disk roughness and its influence on the performance of proximity recording sliders

This paper studies the influence of disk roughness on the performance of proximity recording sliders by both experimentation and simulation. Experimental results indicate that the disk roughness plays an important role in whether or not the sliders can fully fly, even though all the other conditions are the same. Such phenomena are further studied with a self-developed probability model. The simulation results are well correlated with the testing results. Investigations are further extended to the surface roughness requirement of both the air-bearing surface and the disk surface for the slider/disk interface with 5 nm to 15 nm head/disk spacing.