An Active-head Slider with a Piezoelectric Actuator for Controlling Flying Height (2)

Abstract

The current design of magnetic disk head sliders needs an extra margin of flying height for manufacturing tolerance or environmental variation. To reduce this margin, we have developed active head sliders. These sliders carry an unimorph piezoelectric micro-actuator and their flying height can be controlled. After simulating the piezoelectric deflection and flying characteristics, we designed two types of active head sliders and fabricated them by silicon micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) processing. We solved some fabrication problems left in our previous report and optically observed the slider change its flying height as an electric voltage was applied to the micro-actuator.