The Effect of Slider Texture on the Tribology of Near Contact Recording Sliders

Island-type texture was fabricated on two types of pico-sliders using plasma etching and ion beam etching. Laser–Doppler interferometry was used to investigate the vibrations of textured and untextured pico-sliders in near-contact situations. Lubricant depletion on the disk surface was investigated in the slider “wear tracks” using scanning ellipsometry (Surface Reflectance Analyzer (SRA)). The results show that slider in-plane and out-of-plane vibrations were reduced as a consequence of the texture on the slider surface. In addition, lubricant depletion on the disk surface was found to be less severe for textured sliders than for untextured sliders at flying heights below 10 nm.