Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation

Ming-Ching Tang

Ciuter Chang

Jih-Ping Peng

Tzong-Shii Pan

Martin J Smallen

A disk drive includes a disk having a recording surface and a head stack assembly. The head stack assembly includes a body portion that includes a bore defining a pivot axis, an actuator arm cantilevered from the body portion and a head gimbal assembly supported at the actuator arm. The head gimbal assembly includes a load beam, a gimbal coupled to the load beam and a slider coupled to the gimbal, the slider including a transducer for reading and writing on the recording surface. The slider includes an air bearing surface that is configured to form a shallow recessed surface and a deep recessed surface. The air-bearing surface includes a leading air bearing region and one or more insular regions configured to reduce stiction with the disk. The shallow recessed surface is disposed between the air bearing surface and the deep recessed surface.

Slider having a textured air bearing surface, head stack assembly and disk drive using same

An air bearing slider for use in a disk drive that includes a rotatable magnetic disk. The slider includes a leading side and a trailing side. The slider further includes a pressurized pad including a pressurized pad air bearing surface. The pressurized pad is disposed between the leading and trailing sides. The slider further includes a contact pad disposed adjacent the trailing side and including a contact surface for sliding contact with the magnetic disk during operation of the disk drive. The contact pad includes a transducer disposed within the contact pad for reading and writing data from and to the magnetic disk. The slider further includes a depressed region disposed between the pressurized pad and the contact pad for mitigating air pressure adjacent the contact surface relative to air pressure adjacent the pressurized pad air bearing surface during operation of the disk drive.

Air bearing slider including a depressed region extending from a main support structure between a pressurized pad support base and a contact pad support base

Disclosed is a flying head slider and suspension assembly with a stress relief for minimizing the stress between a slider having a first linear coefficient of thermal expansion, and a suspension having a surface for adhering the head slider, the suspension having a second linear coefficient of thermal expansion greater than the first linear coefficient of thermal expansion. The flying head slider may be employed for recording and reproducing data on a magnetic disk of a magnetic disk file. One embodiment of the stress relief comprises an opening in the suspension separating the adherence surface into separate portions, each portion for adhering a portion of the head slider, and connected by formed legs on either side of the opening. Another embodiment comprises at least one shaped bumper between the surface and the head slider to provide a uniform thickness of adhesive for adhering the head slider. A further embodiment comprises a reduced thickness portion of the suspension at the surface which is less than the total area of the adherence surface. If the suspension is an integrated lead suspension having several layers which are selectively etched, the same processes and the same layers may be used for producing the stress relief.

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Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Ming-Ching Tang