In order to avoid stiction of the head to a smooth disk in fabrication of the rigid thin film media, the surface of the disk substrate is generally roughened by a mechanical abrasive technique known as texturing. This technique is usually limited to NiP-AlMg substrates and has not been successfully applied to alternate substrates. Furthermore, it has been shown that the mechanical texturing (cross-hatched, near circumferential scratches) induces a texture noise which, in turn, degrades the error rate of the media at higher recording densities [1]. The surface roughening of the disk substrate by other means than mechanical texturing have been reported recently [2-3]. This paper reports on a new sputter texture technique which provides the simultaneous attainment of excellent tribology and magnetic performance on both NiP-AlMg and alternate substrates. It involves the sputter deposition of a metal nitride directly onto a substrate to create an appropriate surface roughness via formation of discrete bumps. The medium fabricated with this underlayer is shown to have excellent tribology, absence of texture noise and low error rate at high recording densities.
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