Air-bearing surface (ABS) design to reduce particle scratch risk

摘要

A slider design for a hard disk drive (HDD) features a shallow cavity adjacent to a leading edge that has patterns of sub-cavities of various shapes etched into its base to reduce its original surface area. The presence of these patterns of sub-cavities significantly reduces the probability that the slider will capture particles on the surface of a rotating disk and thereby reduces the corresponding probability of surface scratches that such captured particles inevitably produce.