Thermal actuator for accurate positioning read/write element in hard disk drive

Flying height control (TFC) sliders with thermal actuation, which make it possible to control head disk spacing, have been introduced in commercial products for compensating the flying height loss and reducing the risk of head disk contacts, thus to increase the bit density (Gupta et al. in ASME J Tribol 123:380–387, 2001; Juang and Bogy in ASME J Tribol 129:570–578, 2007; Kurita et al. in Microsyst Technol 12:369–375, 2006; Shiramatsu et al. in IEEE Trans Magn 42:2513–2515, 2006). However, with the increasing of areal density, it is also necessary to increase the track density. To increase track density, it is required to improve the performances of head positioning system in terms of fast transition from one track to another (track seeking), fast and accurate settling, and precise track following of the target track. Dual-actuator systems (Choe in A thermal driven micro actuator for hard disk drive. In: Proceedings of the APMRC 2010, Nov 10–12, 2010, Singapore, 2010; Bain et al. in Electrothermal actuator for hard disk drive application. In: Proceedings of the APMRC 2010, Nov. 10–12, 2010, Singapore, 2010; Furukawa et al. in Fabrication and test of thermal actuator. In: ISPS 2011, Jun. 13–14, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 2011) have been proposed to meet these requirements. These dual-actuator systems consist of a voice-coil-motor (VCM) as a first-stage actuator and a transducer (piezoelectric, electromagnetic, electrostatic and thermal) as a second-stage actuator. The second-stage actuator could be designed to actuate the movement of suspension (suspension driven), slider (slider driven) or head element (head driven). Most of reported dual-actuator systems were made to be suspension driven or slider driven. Recently, Choe by (A thermal driven micro actuator for hard disk drive. In: Proceedings of the APMRC 2010, Nov. 10–12, 2010, Singapore, 2010) and Bain et al. by (Electrothermal actuator for hard disk drive application. In: Proceedings of the APMRC 2010, Nov. 10–12, 2010, Singapore, 2010) reported to use thermal actuators for driving head movement. They attained a thermal transient of less than 10 μs using 2-D finite element simulation. Using thermal actuators to accurately position read/write element could be a promising technology for mass production for future HDD. This kind of control theme was termed as thermal positioning control (TPC). The objective of TPC actuator design is to achieve large actuation stroke as well as increase frequency bandwidth. In our studies, the design procedure may involve several steps: (1) Fundamental studies with simple TPC slider structure by finite element simulations to explore the feasibility of TPC actuation and estimate working frequency range. Also we may be able to find out the problems which induced by TPC actuator. (2) Prototyped TPC slider, and tested its frequency characteristics to confirm the feasibility and achievability of TPC actuation. (3) Increases TPC actuation stroke and frequency bandwidth by improving TPC slider structures and servo control schemes. This paper explores the feasibility studies of TPC slider by finite element simulation. The principle and structural modeling of slider with TPC heater was first introduced. Then static–static simulation was carried out to study the steady deformation displacement at read/write element and transient analysis was conducted to estimate the deformation displacement response. It was found that 7 nm deformation stroke at read/write element could be attained at steady state with 50 mW input power, and the deformation displacement was about 1.7 nm after power was applied to TPC heater 1.5 ms (frequency of 1 kHz based on first order delay system). Meanwhile, it was found that protrusion on the air bearing surface (ABS) becomes a problem for the slider’s flying performance, thus the ABS design was improved to reduce protrusion’s effect, and cross-talk effect between TFC and TPC actuators was then investigated.