Direct Monte Carlo simulation of air bearing effects in heat-assisted magnetic recording

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising high density recording technology in current hard disk industry. It is proposed to use a heat source from the slider system for heating up the recording media in order to increase its storage density. The heat generated from a heat spot on the disk and/or the higher slider body temperature in HAMR system could affect the slider air bearing and flying height. This paper studies the heat effects on slider air bearing characteristics by using the direct Monte Carlo simulation (DSMC) method. The simulation results show that the heat spot less than 50 nm in diameter could not affect much to the air bearing; however, its location should be away from the bearing pressure peak to minimize the heat spot effect. Furthermore, high temperature slider could increase the bearing pressure and force and the trend of force increment is independent of the flow channel length.