Reduction of Head Wear on Thin-Film Magnetic Disks

It is necessary to reduce head wear to develop future hard disk drives. For this purpose, we have been studying transparent pin-on-disk wear tests on thin-film magnetic disks. We reported that pin wear on thin-film magnetic disk showed running-in effects. The reason of the running-in was considered to be a result of disk surface flattening. This means that if we could introduce an efficient burnishing technique, we could reduce head wear in operation. We then introduced a burnishing technique using a hemispherical diamond slider and compared pin wear on disk surfaces with and without burnishing. The results showed that the pin wear was reduced by the introduction of the burnishing technique. We consider that burnishing with hard round slider is another way of reducing head wear on future disk surfaces.