Nanometre scale island-type texture with controllable height and area ratio formed by ion-beam etching on hard-disk head sliders

Abstract

It has been common practice to apply a surface texture to the disk surface in a hard disk drive in order to minimize the stiction force caused by the contact of the extremely smooth surfaces of the head slider and disk. The surface of head sliders is usually made as smooth as possible without any purposely formed texture. In this work, a texture on the hard-disk slider surface was formed by ion-beam etching as a result of the different etching rates among the different phases composing the material of the hard-disk slider. By this method, an island-type texture can be formed on the air-bearing surface of the hard-disk slider. The relation between the texturing condition, the slider material and the shape of the obtained texture is discussed. The texture area ratio was 6-36%, and the diameter of the island was in the range of 0.3-4 µm. The texture area ratio and island diameter could be changed by changing the composition of head slider material. The height of island could be linearly controlled from 3-20 nm with an accuracy of ±1 nm by changing the dose of the ion beam. It is concluded that ion-beam texturing is a promising method for producing texture on the slider surface, with the advantage of simple processing.