Effect of micro-waviness and design of landing zones with a glide avalanche below 0.5 /spl mu/" for conventional pico sliders

The effect of substrate micro-waviness and laser bump size were identified to be dominant on the tribology performance of laser zone texture for ultra-low glide avalanche applications. Smaller laser bumps tend to give a lower minimum allowable bump height with acceptable stiction, thus allowing for a laser texture design with a lower glide avalanche height. Remarkably, it was found that lower substrate micro-waviness can further reduce the minimum allowable bump height and result in an even lower glide avalanche laser texture. A proper design based on smaller laser bumps and lower substrate micro-waviness demonstrated that it is feasible to have a laser zone texture with a glide avalanche below 0.5 /spl mu/" for conventional pico sliders.