Numerical simulation of thermal flying height control sliders in heat-assisted magnetic recording

Heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is one of the most promising techniques to extend the recording density in hard disk drives beyond 1 Tb/in². Although the diameter of the spot on the disk that is heated by the laser beam is very small, on the order of nanometers, high local temperatures on the disk and the heat dissipated in the slider during the light delivery process can cause thermal deformations of both the disk and the slider, thereby affecting the flying characteristics at the head-disk interface. In this paper, a finite element model is developed which incorporates a HAMR optical system into a thermal flying height control (TFC) slider with dual heater/insulator elements to study the effect of heat dissipation in the wave guide on the thermal deformation and flying characteristics of a HAMR-TFC slider. In addition, the power input of the laser and design parameters of the heaters are investigated.