Abstract
The rapid advance of the digital network systems requires storage devices with higher densities and faster transfer rates. These requirements also accelerate the advent of ultra-high-density optical data storage. From this perspective, near-field recording technology is thought to be one of the promising breakthroughs to overcome both the tough diffraction limit and the wavelength-shortening limit. We propose a novel optical head assembly based on flying head slider and flexible optical guide circuit technology. A carefully fabricated optical guide successfully works as a flexure, which suspends a silicon optical slider with an extremely small pyramidal aperture. Measured mechanical characteristics agree well with numerical predictions utilizing FEM structural analysis combined with thin film gas-lubrication analysis. Moreover, we try microscopic optical analysis on the pyramidal aperture based on the Maxwell Equation and the finite-difference time-domain algorithm.
