Slider Dynamics and Wear Behaviors at Subnano-Clearance Head-Disk Interface

Recently, to achieve a stable slider dynamics and a high recording density, a contact (lubricant surfing) recording scheme has been proposed in the literature. However, under contact/surfing condition, the interaction between the head and the disk may bring new tribological issues, which has not been fully understood so far. To amend that, this paper experimentally investigates the relation between the interfacial dynamics and the wear behaviors of head/disk at different contact conditions. To investigate the interfacial dynamics, slider was then flown at different contact stages, and slider vibrations in both the vertical and the downtrack directions were monitored using two laser Doppler vibrometers. The wear depth of slider was inspected after the experiment to correlate interfacial dynamics at different contact stages. According to our results, a severe contact is not necessary to generate serious wear, which has strong correlation with the interfacial dynamics. Compared with the structure modes, the air-bearing modes were found to have a dominant impact on slider wear. Moreover, nonlinear vibration has a much more detrimental effect on the slider wear, although this type of vibration accompanies small amplitude at high-frequency band. This paper helps understand the wear mechanisms of slider under different slider/disk contact conditions, and thus expands new designs for surfing/contact recording technologies.