Abstract
A novel optical head slider for near-field recording is proposed. An air bearing pad pattern formed on the apex of cantilever-like polymeric waveguide, and using the cantilever itself as a suspension of slider, function of flying slider, suspension, and waveguide are all included into one body structure. This structure (flexible head slider) can be fabricated by the method similar to lithographical technique. This structure will be expected to have great advantages in miniaturization of head assembly, simplification of assembling and optical trimming process, and more, lightweight of head assembly brings wider tracking bandwidth. In this paper, we report the result of the readout signal evaluation of flexible optical head slider. Readout signal was obtained using a sample head slider with 0.22μm by 2.2μm aperture, scanning at linear velocity of 1.76m/s over the Cr-coated glass disk with sub-micron width Line-and-Space (L&S) pattern. The read-out of 0.2μm L&S pattern was successfully demonstrated at the contrast of 0.23. Stability of spacing control, signal to noise ratio, efficiency of optical system and the effect of minimizing aperture size was discussed.
