Dynamics of air bearing sliders flying on partially planarized bit patterned media in hard disk drives

Abstract

Bit patterned media (BPM) recording is one of the promising techniques for future disk drives in order to increase the areal density above 1 Tbit/in 2. However, the BPM can change the topography of the disk surface and thus have an effect on the flying characteristics of the air bearing sliders. So achieving a stable flying attitude at the hard disk interface (HDI) becomes one of the main considerations for BPM. In this paper, we apply three methods (complete homogenization, Taylor expansion homogenization and averaging) to solve this BPM problem and finally choose the Taylor expansion homogenization method to investigate the slider's flying attitude on partially planarized patterned media as well as at transitions over different pattern types such as might occur at boundaries between data and servo sections. © 2011 The Author(s).