CONTAMINATION BUILD-UP ON ABS AND ITS EFFECT ON THE READ/WRITE PERFORMANCE OF NEAR-CONTACT RECORDING SYSTEMS

摘要

For disk drives using near-contact slider designs, the head -disk clearance has been reduced to 0.6μin in the inner diameter (ID) of disk surface. As a result, the chance for read/write pad to contact disk surface is significantly, comparing with flying recording case. Such head-disk contact leads to greatly increased likelihood of lubricant transferring to and contamination build-up on the read/write pad. Our AFM (atomic force microscope) measurement shows that the contamination build up on the read/write pad can be as thick as 0.4～1.0 μin. As the head-disk clearance is only 0.6～1.2 μin, such amount of contamination build-up will degrade significantly the read/write performance of disk drives. This paper investigates the effects of head-disk clearance increase (induced by contamination build up) on the read / write performance of near-contact recording system and PRML channel.