Femto slider: fabrication and evaluation [magnetic disk storage]

As technology moves towards 600/spl sim/1000 Gb/in/sup 2/, the mechanical spacing between head-slider and disk media must be reduced from the current level of 10/spl sim/12 nm to 3/spl sim/4 nm. Such reduction of the head-disk spacing will be accompanied by many new challenges. One of them is how to reduce the flying height modulation caused by the micro-waviness of the disk surface. Reducing the slider size from its current pico level to femto level is considered as a promising approach for such a challenge. However, discussions on femto sliders are still limited to theoretical analysis and computer simulation. This paper reports the authors' efforts in the fabrication of such sliders and experimental analysis of the dynamic performance of such femto sliders. Results indicate that the femto slider has easily observable advantages in reducing flying height modulation caused by micro-waviness of the disk surface. Investigations also extend to the study of flying performance sensitivity of femto sliders to the parameter offsets caused by manufacturing and integration processes. Results indicate that the flying performance of the femto slider is more sensitive to crown/camber offset, compared with pico sliders. Efforts also extend to discussion of slider ABS (air bearing surface) designs which are less sensitive to crown/camber offset.