Measurement of angstrom-level laser induced protrusion using touchdown in heat-assisted magnetic recording

In heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), a laser is employed above the read-write transducer to provide energy to the media, lowering its coercivity. However, the laser also brings thermal energy diffusion inside the slider and induces an extra angstrom-level protrusion, which we call laser-induced protrusion (LIP). The LIP needs to be taken into consideration in HAMR due to the significance of head-media spacing. This paper focuses on laser heating on the millisecond timescale during flying in the HAMR conditions. When the laser is turned ON for milliseconds, the LIP forms in the short term ( ∼ μs) and fly height change (FHC) happens in the long term (∼ ms) due to the crown/camber change, resulting in a smaller touchdown power (TDP). Thus, the touchdown power change (ΔTDP) is measured and the LIP is isolated using the time constants. A component-level HAMR stage is used to study the effects of laser-on time, laser current, and linear velocity on the ΔTDP. The experimental results show that the FHC needs ∼ 28 ms to reach the steady state and that the protrusion size presents a two-stage linear relation with the laser current separated by a threshold. The LIP size is reduced by about half when operating from 12 m/s to 24 m/s.