Abstract
The height of laser bumps has been considered as the limit of the minimum flying height in the contact start-stop (CSS) of hard disk drives. In this paper, tribological interactions at flying height under laser bumps are investigated in a spin stand for development of ultra-low flying head-disk interface. With the reduction of the spinning speed in a spin stand, the flying height is decreased under the height of laser bumps and, then, head-disk interactions are investigated using AE and stiction/friction signals. During seek tests and 20000 cycle-sweep tests, AE and stiction/friction signals are not significantly changed and there are no catastrophic failures of head-disk interface. Bearing analysis and AFM analysis show that there are signs of wear and plastic deformation on the disks. It is suggested that flying height could be as low as and, sometimes, lower than laser bump height.
