Disk roughness and its influence on the performance of proximity recordingsliders

This paper studies the influence of disk roughness on the performance of pr oximity recording sliders by both experimentation and simulation. Experimen tal results indicate that the disk roughness plays important roles on wheth er the sliders can fully fly or not, even though all the other conditions a re the same. Such phenomena are further studied with a self-developed proba bility model. The simulation results are well correlated with the testing r esults. investigations are further extended to the surface roughness requir ement of both the air-bearing surface and the disk surface for the slider/d isk interface with 5 nm to 15 nm head/disk spacing.