In-situ contact potential measurement in hard-disk drives

摘要

Approaches are provided for a hard-disk drive (HDD) and a method for measuring the contact potential between head and disk interfaces within a hard-disk drive. In one example, a voltage bias is applied to a head slider at discrete increments, and the touchdown power is determined at each increment. The voltage bias at which the TDP maximizes equals the inverse polarity of the inherent contact potential between the head slider and disk, and this value may be used to apply a voltage that neutralizes the contact potential.